Busts Over Tot Smoking Pot

MARCH 25--While executing a warrant at the home of a couple suspected of selling narcotics, Connecticut police discovered a video showing the duo's three-year-old son allegedly attempting to smoke marijuana.

According to an affidavit filed this week in Middletown Superior Court, police went last month to the residence shared by Kristian Augeri, 23, and Thomas Way, 22, to execute the drug warrant. Two confidential informants had told cops that the pair had "taken pictures of their toddler son smoking marijuana," and that the boy "knew how to crush pills and roll dollar bills."

During the search, a detective discovered a digital camera with a video showing the child "attempting to light a glass smoking pipe." A further examination revealed a video of the boy holding a pipe in his left hand and a lighter in his right hand. As the child attempted to light the bowl, his father was "watching him and laughing." At one point in the video, Way tells the child "he's getting spit all over it and takes it out of his mouth to wipe it down" before handing the pipe back to the boy. Augeri, who is holding the camera, can be heard in the background laughing.

While the child doesn't get the pipe lit while the camera is running, he does appear "to inhale and then starts coughing," according to investigators. Both parents--locked up on $150,000 bond apiece--have been charged with felony risk of injury to a child, as well as various drug and weapons counts. (3 pages)