Utah Mom Had Child Endangerment Drug Charge

MARCH 12--The Utah woman charged with killing her unborn fetus by refusing an emergency Caesarean section took drugs during her pregnancy and was smoking cigarettes minutes before giving birth, The Smoking Gun has learned. Melissa Rowland, the 28-year-old who was pregnant with twins, was charged in January with felony child endangerment after the surviving baby, a girl named Hannah, tested positive for alcohol and cocaine in her urine, according to the below criminal information. A blood test on Rowland also tested positive for cocaine and the twins's biological father told investigators that he had smoked marijuana with Rowland three weeks before the birth. While acknowledging that she smoked pot, Rowland told cops that "the marijuana must have been laced with cocaine because that is the only way that cocaine could be in her system or in Hannah's system." Before Rowland finally agreed to the January 13 C-section, she was "uncooperative and continually insisted on going outside to smoke first," according to a nurse interviewed by cops. (3 pages)