Couple Who Fatally Drugged a 4-Year-Old Child so They Could Have Sex Show No Emotion in Court

A man was sentenced to 13 years in prison for fatally drugging a child. He responded to the sentence with "whatever."

A 40-year-old English man shrugged “whatever” after he received 13 years in prison for fatally drugging a little girl.

According to Elite Daily, 4-year-old Poppy Widdison was given diazepam, heroin, methadone, and ketamine for at least six months before succumbing to cardiac arrest at drug dealer John Rytting’s home in England. The child’s mother, Michala Pyke, was apparently in a relationship with Rytting, and admitted she fed the drugs to her daughter so the couple wouldn’t be disrupted while having sex.

Prosecutor David Gordon pointed to a text message in which Pyke told her drug dealer boyfriend that she would give Poppy a “blue Smartie” (code for diazepam) to put her to sleep. Following the child’s death, police raided Rytting’s home, where they found 700 diazepam and 300 temazepam tablets. The man said he purchased the drugs from a supplier in Asia and then would sell them on the black market, according to the Sun.

Toxicology tests found that Poppy had “significant amounts” of heroin and methadone in her system before death. And although tests concluded she had ingested the substances for at least six months prior, Rytting’s attorney, Timothy Roberts, insisted his client was not fully responsible for the death.

“Mr Rytting had been in [Poppy’s] life for about six weeks and what can be agreed is that he only had partial responsibility for care of her,” Roberts said in court.

Despite the claim, the court sentenced both Rytting and Pyke to 13 years in prison.

Poppy’s biological father, Brendan Widdison, spoke outside of court, saying, “We as a family could not contact Michala in the last few weeks before Poppy’s death. However, if we had known…the concerns of the social care, we might have acted differently as a family.”

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