A 58-year-old woman is facing involuntary manslaughter charges after Cook County prosecutors accused her of leaving a bag of narcotics within reach of a toddler who put the drugs in his mouth and later died of an overdose inside an East Garfield Park apartment. Michelle Gandy left the drugs near nearly 2-year-old X’zayvion Walton on the evening of March 24, prosecutors allege, and the boy ingested them before anyone realized what had happened.
According to CWB Chicago, Chicago police officers and Chicago Fire Department paramedics responded to a 911 call shortly before 10 p.m. that night at an apartment in the 3100 block of West Fifth Avenue, where they found X’zayvion unresponsive. Paramedics rushed him to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The Cook County medical examiner’s office later determined that the boy died from a combined overdose of fentanyl, medetomidine, dexmedetomidine and what the office described as probable heroin.
Medetomidine and dexmedetomidine are sedatives used in medical settings, the outlet’s report notes, and medetomidine is approved only for veterinary use in the United States — meaning its presence in a street drug supply reaching a small child represents an especially alarming combination. Prosecutors further accused Gandy of destroying evidence and lying about what happened in an attempt to cover up the circumstances of the boy’s death and hinder the investigation that followed.
Charges and Detention Order
Gandy is charged with involuntary manslaughter of a family member and child endangerment causing death, the report states. Police arrested her on a sidewalk outside the Daley Center, and Judge James Murphy III ordered her held in custody, citing what he described as her extensive criminal history — five felony convictions and 19 misdemeanor convictions, per the same account.
The dossier underlying this case does not include Gandy’s attorney or any defense response, and the exact relationship between Gandy and the toddler beyond the charged offense’s description of a family member has not been detailed publicly. CWB Chicago’s report also contains a discrepancy in the boy’s age: the October account describes him as nearly 2 years old, while an earlier June report from the same outlet described the child as 1 year old.
Second Toddler Overdose Death in Less Than a Year
X’zayvion was the second young Chicago child to die of an overdose in less than a year, the outlet reports. On July 15, 2025, the mother of 2-year-old Pier’Re Welborne flagged down Chicago police officers in the 2600 block of West Roosevelt Road, having reportedly found Pier’Re unresponsive in a stroller. Officers reportedly found her slumped over and rushed her to Stroger Hospital in a squad car, where she died.
An autopsy determined that Pier’Re died from a combined overdose of methadone and tramadol, an opioid-based pain medication, and the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled her death a homicide, with Chicago police records classifying it as a murder. As of the earlier report, no charges had been filed in that case.
A Citywide Overdose Crisis, Even as Deaths Decline
The deaths of X’zayvion and Pier’Re come against the backdrop of a broader, if improving, opioid crisis in Chicago. Opioid-involved overdose deaths in Cook County declined 42% in 2024 compared with 2022, according to the Cook County Department of Public Health, with the county recording 1,138 opioid-involved overdose deaths in 2024 compared with 1,783 in 2023 and 1,961 in 2022. Chicago’s opioid overdose mortality rate fell 37.2% between 2023 and 2024, the department reports.
Even with that decline, Chicago’s opioid overdose mortality rate of 28.7 per 100,000 in 2024 still exceeded both the state of Illinois’ rate of 14.6 and the national rate of 17.9, per the department. Fentanyl was involved in 91.7% of opioid overdose deaths in the city that year. The department and its community partners distributed 25,136 naloxone kits and trained 14,252 people on overdose response during 2023 and 2024 as part of the response effort.
