The boy’s tiny lifeless body lay on a bed last year inside a home along The Paseo. When Kansas City police officers found 2-year-old Cillian Miller in August 2022, he was wearing only a green T-shirt and was naked from the waist down. Most of his body was covered in a blanket except his feet, which were already discolored, court records show. Strewn throughout the home were new and used syringes, glass pipes and “multiple strips of foil with apparent burnt residue.” One pipe was left underneath a partially eaten McDonald’s cheeseburger on the dining room table. And somewhere inside that home, the child came across fentanyl. Tests would later show the little boy was yet another victim of the drug ravaging the nation and taking hundreds of lives in the Kansas City area. In KC, and across both Missouri and Kansas, dozens of little children have died from the illicit drug in the past three years, The Star has found in an ongoing investigation into the toll fentanyl has taken on our community. This report on our youngest victims launches an extensive project that will include community outreach and stories about the broader impact of fentanyl on the Kansas City area and the challenges of policing the problem. Unlike other drug crises, including crack, these children aren’t suffering from debilitating addictions because their parents were using; they are dying of actual fentanyl overdoses. The babies and toddlers — ages 4 and under — have come across the synthetic opioid and its residue in their homes, inside hotel rooms and even at a city park. Their deaths have largely gone unnoticed, ending up as statistics inside annual state reports on child deaths or in records kept by county medical examiners. Most of the attention on fentanyl has focused on teens or young adults and the awareness that “one pill can kill.”
Hellbound and Down 