Two-Year-Old's Fentanyl Death Leads to Second-Degree Murder Charges for Both Parents

On February 12, 2026, a 911 call was made from a home near Dolores Park in San Francisco reporting an unresponsive child. Medics arrived and found a two-year-old who was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy later determined the cause of death to be acute fentanyl toxicity, and investigators found fentanyl and drug paraphernalia inside the home.

On April 15, 2026, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced that murder charges had been filed. Michelle Price, 38, the child’s mother, and her boyfriend Steve Ramirez, 43, were each charged with second-degree murder. Neither has been convicted.

The Two-Year-Old at the Center

The victim was a two-year-old child, the son of Michelle Price. At two years old, he had no capacity to protect himself from what was present in his home, no ability to recognize the danger of what adults around him had introduced into the space where he slept, ate, and lived. His death, according to the medical examiner, was caused entirely by fentanyl exposure – a substance he would have had no understanding of and no means of avoiding.

The family’s home near Dolores Park – a neighborhood that carries the associations of San Francisco’s most public green space – became the site of an investigation that would eventually produce murder charges against the adults responsible for the child’s care.

What the Charges Mean

Second-degree murder charges in connection with a child’s drug exposure death represent prosecutors’ determination that the conduct involved reached beyond negligence into criminal culpability. The presence of fentanyl and drug paraphernalia in a home where a two-year-old was living, per the DA’s framing, was not a tragic accident but the product of choices that created a lethal environment for a child.

District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who announced the charges in April, has taken an aggressive posture on drug-related deaths under her tenure in San Francisco. The murder charges filed here reflect that posture: holding adults responsible not merely for possession but for the lethal consequences that followed.

The Home as the Danger Zone

Among the most difficult dimensions of cases like this one is that the danger came not from a stranger, not from the street, not from some external risk that a parent failed to shield a child from – but from inside the home itself. The home, in this case, was the source of the threat.

San Francisco has been navigating an acute fentanyl crisis for several years, with the drug’s extreme potency making even incidental exposure potentially fatal. A two-year-old does not need to ingest a meaningful quantity to suffer catastrophic effects. The presence of the drug in a home where a young child lived is the foundation of the case prosecutors are now building.

What Comes Next

Michelle Price and Steve Ramirez face second-degree murder charges in San Francisco Superior Court. No trial date has been publicly confirmed as of this writing. Both have been charged but have not entered publicly reported pleas.

The case is one of a growing number across major American cities where prosecutors have moved to apply murder statutes to parents or caregivers whose drug use or environments directly caused the death of a young child. For the child who was found unresponsive near Dolores Park on a February morning, the legal proceedings represent the only form of accountability now available.

References: San Francisco couple face murder charges over toddler’s fatal fentanyl overdose | California couple charged in toddler’s fentanyl death