“You have to know what happened.” In August 2021, Enora Lavenir, a 19-month-old baby, was found dead after her nap with a lethal dose of fentanyl in her body. The Lavenir family, residing in Guadalupe, later rented a vacation rental through the Airbnb platform in Palm Beach (Florida, United States), TF1 reports.
Since this tragedy, his parents have been trying to understand how their son could have ingested such a product. “This can’t end like this. You have to know what happened,” Boris Lavenir, the father of the deceased baby, told the media.
According to information from Washington Postthe parents recently filed a lawsuit against the rental housing platform for negligence, but also against the homeowner and the tenant who preceded them in Palm Beach.
Fentanyl found during autopsy
On the day of the tragedy, at the beginning of the family vacation, Lydie Lavenir, Enora’s mother, finds her baby dead after letting him take a nap. The family calls for help, but it is too late. The parents initially believe her son succumbed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
This syndrome characterizes the “death of a baby, until now considered in good health, when nothing in its history allowed us to anticipate it”, explains Public Health France.
But an autopsy is carried out and the toxicological examination reveals that the baby’s body contained a lethal dose of fentanyl, a drug that has wreaked havoc in the United States for several years.
Fentanyl is “the deadliest drug threat in the country today,” the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said in December. “It is a highly addictive man-made opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin. Just two milligrams of fentanyl, the small amount that fits on the tip of a pencil, is considered a potentially lethal dose,” he said.
Where does fentanyl come from?
The big question in this case remains for the moment the origin of this fentanyl. The parents are suspected and examined, but no trace is found on them. On the other hand, “investigators have found no evidence of the presence of fentanyl in any other part of the vacation apartment,” writes the Washington Post.
“I am currently unable to determine how baby Enora Lavenir ingested the fentanyl, therefore I am unable to develop a probable cause of abuse or neglect leading to Enora’s death,” an investigator wrote in the police report, obtained by various US media outlets. .
The previous tenants of the apartment are questioned and one of them explains to the investigators that he organized a party, a few weeks before the Lavenir family’s rental, during which drugs, such as cocaine, circulated. But not Fentanyl, he assures himself.
Contacted by BFMTV.com, Airbnb notes that this is the first time this Palm Beach home has been rented by someone on its platform, the Lavenir family being the first tenants. The former occupant, accused of having possibly left fentanyl in the place, had rented this same accommodation in July through another platform: the American site VRBO.
“Our thoughts are with the Lavenir family and their loved ones as they deal with the immense loss of this child,” Airbnb said.
“Someone just didn’t do the housework correctly”
Lawyers for this former tenant and the owner of the Palm Beach home deny responsibility for the baby’s death, pointing instead to possible negligent and reckless conduct on the part of the parents, reports the palm beach stall.
The parents are certain that their baby ingested the fentanyl in the rented accommodation. The federal prosecutor for Enora Lavenir’s parents, Thomas Scolaro, told the same outlet that the baby had not left the Airbnb accommodation: “She was not leaving. They did not travel with her. So she was 100% exposed inside this Airbnb,” he says.
“In fact, someone just didn’t do the housework correctly and that’s hard. It’s hard to think that you’re losing your life because there was negligence,” Lydie Lavenir told TF1.
Source: BFM TV
