A Marlboro County woman has been arrested after her newborn tested positive for cocaine, according to investigators. Octavia Henegan turned herself in to face a felony charge of unlawful conduct toward a child following the positive drug test, along with an outstanding 2025 warrant for malicious injury to property.
Medical documentation indicated the newborn had tested positive for cocaine, according to investigators, as reported by WYFF. The Marlboro County Sheriff’s Office said Henegan is charged with unlawful conduct toward a child, and the Department of Social Services contacted the sheriff’s office in connection with the case. Investigators went on to obtain warrants for Henegan, and she turned herself in once those warrants were secured.
Marlboro County sits along the North Carolina border in northeastern South Carolina, home to roughly 25,000 residents, with law enforcement operating out of county facilities in Bennettsville, according to Marlboro County Government. The sheriff’s office there regularly coordinates with state DSS on child welfare and narcotics cases, a dynamic playing out again with this arrest.
A Second, Older Warrant Surfaces
Alongside the child endangerment charge, Henegan was served with an outstanding arrest warrant for malicious injury to property tied to an incident from 2025. Under South Carolina Code § 16-11-510, malicious injury to personal property is a misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in jail when damage totals $2,000 or less, but it becomes a felony carrying up to 5 or 10 years in prison if the damage exceeds that amount, per the Kinard Law Group. It remains unclear from available reporting which tier applies in Henegan’s case.
The unlawful conduct toward a child charge itself carries far steeper stakes. South Carolina Code § 63-5-70 makes the offense a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison per count upon conviction, according to the South Carolina Legislature, and the law applies to parents or legal custodians who place a child at unreasonable risk of physical or mental harm.
Why South Carolina Prosecutes Cases Like This
South Carolina’s approach to newborn drug exposure traces back to the 1997 South Carolina Supreme Court decision in Whitner v. State, which established that a viable fetus counts as a “child” under the state’s child abuse statutes, according to FindLaw. That ruling made South Carolina the first state high court in the nation to extend criminal child neglect laws to viable fetuses, giving prosecutors explicit authority to charge mothers whose newborns test positive for illegal drugs.
That authority is not unlimited. In the 2001 case Ferguson v. City of Charleston, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that nonconsensual drug testing of pregnant hospital patients coordinated directly with police for law enforcement purposes violates the Fourth Amendment, per the AMA Journal of Ethics. Post-delivery drug tests reported to child welfare agencies, however, remain standard hospital practice and are not affected by that ruling.
South Carolina is one of only three states nationwide — along with Alabama and Oklahoma — where court rulings or explicit statutes give law enforcement formal legal backing to criminally charge women for substance use during pregnancy, according to reporting cited in the dossier from December 2023. Most states instead handle prenatal drug exposure through civil child protective proceedings rather than criminal courts.
What Happens to the Child Now
Under South Carolina Code § 63-7-1660(F), proof that a newborn tests positive for a controlled substance creates a legal presumption that the infant is abused or neglected, which allows DSS to seek emergency court authorization to remove the child, according to the Child Welfare Information Gateway. That presumption does not apply if the drug presence resulted from authorized medical treatment during delivery. It is not known from available reporting whether Henegan’s newborn has been placed in emergency foster care or what the infant’s current health status is.
If a court eventually finds that Henegan committed child abuse or neglect, South Carolina Code § 63-7-1940 would place her on the state’s Central Registry of Child Abuse and Neglect, a listing that legally bars individuals from working in childcare, schools, or foster care roles, according to the University of South Carolina School of Law. Registry placement is ordered automatically upon a judicial finding of maltreatment, though no such finding has been made in Henegan’s case at this stage.
The South Carolina Department of Social Services recorded nearly 1,600 reports of substance-affected newborns statewide in 2022, according to the Post and Courier, since hospital drug tests of newborns routinely trigger mandatory referrals to DSS. A national investigation published in February 2026 found that South Carolina child welfare authorities routinely forward all accepted allegations of pregnancy substance use directly to police agencies for potential criminal prosecution, according to the Marshall Project, part of a pipeline that has sent tens of thousands of postpartum mothers across several states toward law enforcement scrutiny after giving birth.
It remains unclear whether Henegan was granted bond on either the felony child conduct charge or the malicious injury to property warrant. Hoodline has not identified any prior local coverage of this case.
