Death of girl shocks school, city | Local News

The death of an 11-year-old sixth-grader has left Haverhill’s Consentino School community in shock, and has police looking for answers about how the girl died.

Precious Wallaces became ill when she was visiting a home in Lawrence.

A police dispatcher sent an officer to an apartment on Jackson Street in Lawrence after a caller said a child “ate a bunch of candy and is now bleeding through the nose and mouth.”

The girl was also “having a hard time breathing,” according to a recording of Lawrence Police Department audio from early the morning of Dec. 15.

Shortly after, a police sergeant asked for state police investigators to be called to the apartment building, according to the recording.

The girl died four days later at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, where she was airlifted after the early morning incident at 233 Jackson St., unit 5, authorities said.

Lawrence police and troopers assigned to the district attorney’s office are investigating the girl’s death.

Grief counselors have visited Consentino School to provide emotional support to students and teachers there, as they deal with the shock and confusion of the death.

Precious had been in a coma and on life support prior to her death. School officials had the counselors start visiting the school the Monday after Precious became ill and while she was on life support.

Exposure to fentanyl, a manmade opioid, or another toxic substance may have killed the girl, who had been visiting her uncle at the Lawrence apartment, according to investigators.

Fentanyl, often a cause of overdose deaths, is a synthetic opioid that is 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine. The drug is often combined with or mistaken for heroin.

A sudden change in mental state, including confusion and loss of consciousness, and shallow breathing are symptoms of a fentanyl overdose.

A person’s lips and nail beds can turn blue and their pupils will pinpoint, said Paul Brennan, Lawrence General Hospital’s director of pre-hospital emergency medical services.

“We rarely see any oral fentanyl overdoses,” said Brennan, speaking generally about fentanyl exposure and overdose symptoms.

Lollipops containing fentanyl are at times prescribed to cancer patients, as well as fentanyl skin patches, which are occasionally abused by overdose victims, Brennan said.

Local first responders typically see overdoses caused by injections of fentanyl or when the drug is snorted but not so frequently from exposure, Brennan said.

Police said the girl and her brother routinely visited an uncle who lived in the Jackson Street apartment building.

The name “Miguel Rivera” was listed on a mailbox for unit 5. Two signs regarding surveillance video on the property are posted on the front porch.

Attempts to reach Rivera as well as others among Precious’ relatives have been unsuccessful.

Cathie Rivera, a woman who identified herself as the girl’s aunt, has started a GoFundMe page to raise money for funeral expenses.