BABY FINDS CRACK IN MOTEL ROOM & EATS IT

Oh my! At 11 months old, Jahmai Portis is teething. He came to Virginia Beach with his mother, April, to meet his grandparents for the first time. Because the baby wakes up frequently during the night, April reserved a room at the Motel 6 on Euclid Road in Virginia Beach.

It was in room 223, Jahmai’s mother says he found a spoon under the bed, and put it in his mouth. His grandmother was the first to notice.
“She looked at it and she’s like, look at this,” said April Portis, Jahmai’s mother. “I took it from her and on the back of the spoon it was all burnt up and on the top of the spoon was the residue from the cocaine on it.”

Portis called police. She says an officer performed a test on the spot, and confirmed cocaine was on the spoon. “It’s horrible because I don’t know if there could be a long term effect from it,” said Portis.
In the pictures she provided WAVY.com, she says the hand in the blue glove is the hand of the police officer. An ambulance rushed Jahmai to the hospital. Medical records cite a “nontoxic accidental cocaine ingestion.” The baby is expected to be okay.
Portis says Motel 6 refunded her stay for the first night and moved her to room 105. Her family noticed the room had a foul smell, and after searching found animal feces in the corner. They called a maid to check it out.
“The maid was kind of bent down like this, saying ‘I don’t see anything, I don’t see anything,’” said Ronald Hartshorn, the child’s grandfather, as he demonstrated what happened. “And when I went like this…that’s when the crack pipe fell out of the other side of the bed on the floor.”

But with pictures as proof, the family hopes a higher authority will make sure this does not happen to anyone else. “It ruined my vacation, her vacation, everyone’s vacation,” said Hartshorn.
Virginia Beach police spokesperson Grazia Moyers said this is not a police matter. There is currently no police report or investigation at this time. Moyers said at this point, it could fall on the health department to look into the allegations and make whatever recommendations are needed.