Mom kills second child in co-sleeping accident

Mackenzie Kaitlyn Reed, 24, was arrested in North Carolina last week after a second infant in her care died from suffocation while she was co-sleeping with him in 2023.

When police investigated after the death of Zhen, seven weeks old, they found that his mother was smoking THC and eating THC gummies during the day before he died. She reportedly fed him around midnight and then fell asleep next to him.

He was suffocated sometime in the night and was found not breathing.

The circumstances were similar to the manner in which her son Justin died one year earlier in 2022, when he was three months old, another incident that implicated the mother's drug use.

Reed was charged with involuntary manslaughter, felony child abuse serious injury, and child abuse/neglect serious physical injury. She has three other sons.