State tweaks charges in day care heroin case

GEORGETOWN – Prosecutors put off moving ahead with charges that Ashley Tull, whose young daughter unknowingly brought heroin into a daycare center, maintained a drug property at her home in a preliminary hearing Thursday.

The state amended three other charges against Tull, alleging that she endangered the welfare of children, to put them in the jurisdiction of Family Court.

A hearing in Tull's case was held Thursday in the Court of Common Pleas. If she is indicted on a charge of maintaining a drug property, her case would be elevated to Superior Court.

Deputy Attorney General Christopher M. Hutchison told Judge Rosemary Betts Beauregard than an indictment may come in November. "There are additional suspects to be investigated," he said, in addition to forensic tests and interviews with young children that need to be done.

Tull, 30, was arrested earlier this month after her 4-year-old daughter turned up at her Selbyville day care, Beginner's Choice, and offered other children small baggies, thinking they were party favors with sticker tattoos and candy inside.

In fact, police said, 249 baggies of heroin, stamped "slam," were in the child's backpack. Her teacher didn't think anything of it, but the second adult employee who saw them suspected they held drugs and called police.

In court papers filed after her arrest, a state police detective said Tull told him the father of one of her kids, ages 4, 9 and 11, visited her a few days earlier and left packets of heroin, wrapped in a napkin, in her bedroom.

The morning the drugs were discovered, her daughter went to day care with a different backpack than the one she normally carries, Tull told police.

In the courthouse, Tull declined to comment. She is being represented by a Georgetown defense attorney, Thomas Pedersen.

"The state's not moving forward with that charge at this time," Pedersen said after the court hearing, referring to the felony drug property charge. "It could come back."

At first, the court ordered Tull to stay away from her children pending trial. On Oct. 9, the terms of her $6,000 bond were relaxed to allow supervised visits with them, court records show.

Contact James Fisher at (302) 983-6772, on Twitter @JamesFisherTNJ or jfisher@delawareonline.com.