Baby boy found living in drug-filled and 'filthy' Delco home

Collingdale police who responded to a domestic dispute Wednesday were repulsed by what they saw inside a Rhodes Avenue apartment: a 6-month-old boy living in squalor, surrounded by marijuana, pills and drug-packaging materials.

Officers of the Delaware County municipality already had been called to the apartment twice that day because the child's parents, Harry Copper and Christina French, were arguing loudly, Collingdale Police Chief Robert Adams said. When they arrived for a third time, they took the couple into custody for disorderly conduct and went inside to check on the child, Adams said.

"The baby was lying facedown on the sofa," he said. "He looked like a doll with a diaper on."

The child was transported by ambulance to Taylor Hospital for medical evaluation and has been placed in his grandmother's custody.

French, 18, and Copper, 23, who is on parole for a robbery conviction, were charged with drug possession with intent to distribute, child endangerment and related counts, Adams said.

"It was nasty, drugs everywhere, filthy, dirty," Adams said of the apartment, which was filled with trash - even in the baby's crib. Food was dumped on the kitchen floor.

"I looked in the refrigerator and almost puked," he said.

After obtaining a search warrant, cops found what they believed to be marijuana, apparently packaged for sale, a digital scale and prescription pills, some of them on the living-room table, Adams said.

"We think they were selling them," he said.

The couple are being held at the Delaware County Prison in Thornton, pending a preliminary hearing next week.