The mother of an 8-month-old boy who died of a fentanyl overdose in a Roseville hotel room has admitted she is responsible for his death and will be put on probation as part of a plea deal with the prosecution, according to court records.
Wynona Ann Littlewolf, 30, of Bemidji, Minn., pleaded guilty in Ramsey County District Court last week to second-degree manslaughter in connection with the March 2022 death of Ashton Michael Littlewolf at the DoubleTree by Hilton on Cleveland Avenue.
Wynona Ann Littlewolf (Courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Corrections)
The plea deal calls for Littlewolf to receive at sentencing a downward departure to probation for up to five years and no additional time to serve. She’s scheduled to be sentenced June 6.
According to the criminal complaint, St. Paul police were sent to a business in the city’s St. Anthony Park neighborhood around 2:45 p.m. March 12, 2022, on a report of a baby who was blue, unconscious and not breathing. Medics responded and pronounced the infant dead, noting he was already in rigor mortis and his body seemed abnormally cold.
Littlewolf and her boyfriend told officers they had stayed overnight at the DoubleTree and found Ashton was purple when they awoke in the afternoon. They left for a hospital, but stopped at the St. Paul business for help after getting lost.
Officers recovered drug paraphernalia from the hotel room: a burnt piece of tinfoil in the bathroom and a rolled-up dollar bill on the floor.
An autopsy on her son concluded he died of fentanyl toxicity.
Littlewolf agreed to speak to investigators from the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee on March 30, 2023, when she was serving time for two Cass County cases. She said her son was starting to eat solid foods and had just started crawling and standing up. She said he crawled on the hotel floor during their stay.
Littlewolf said she and her boyfriend had argued after dinner and so she went into the bathroom to calm down and smoke heroin. When she left the bathroom, she found her boyfriend and Ashton asleep on a bed. She moved the infant to his crib.
When asked if she was responsible for her son’s death, Littlewolf replied, “I think I should have been watching him more,” the complaint states. “Okay, I should have been, you know, I should have been watching him a lot more, but I pushed him off to [her boyfriend].”
Charged while incarcerated
The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged Littlewolf just over two years after Ashton’s death while she was still incarcerated at the Shakopee prison for second-degree burglary and possession of a fifth-degree controlled substance. Both cases occurred on Sept. 21, 2022, six months after the infant’s death.
Dennis Gerhardstein, Ramsey County Attorney’s Office spokesman, said Friday the delay in charging Littlewolf in Ashton’s death had to do with an ongoing law enforcement investigation and because in January 2023 she requested execution of her Cass County cases. She received a sentence of two years and four months in prison, with 45 days of credit for time already served in custody.
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The investigation into Ashton’s death hinged on results of an analysis by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension of the drug paraphernalia found in the Roseville hotel room — the tinfoil and dollar bill — as well as a subsequent blood sample from Littlewolf. Both the items and her blood tested positive for the presence of fentanyl, the complaint says.
Littlewolf was released from the Shakopee prison and into supervised probation on July 1. She was discharged from probation April 9.
As far as the plea deal calling for probation in the infant’s death, Gerhardstein said the attorney’s office reviews the facts on a case-by-case basis before recommending a solution. He noted that Littlewolf had taken advantage of sobriety counseling and other prison services.
“Knowing she was progressing well and that her time inside would count as time served in any conviction, the (attorney’s office) felt it would be better to pursue an outcome of extended supervised probation rather than a few additional months in prison,” he said.
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