BY ROGER SMITH
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN
FRANKFORT — A Northern Kentucky woman convicted of murder after her toddler son ingested her fentanyl in 2021 will remain in prison. The Kentucky Supreme Court has upheld her 33-year sentence, Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman announced Friday.
A Kenton County jury in 2023 convicted Lauren Baker, 37, of Ludlow, of wanton murder and two first-degree drug trafficking charges. She received a 28-year sentence for wanton murder and two concurrent 5-year sentences for drug trafficking.
Baker later appealed her convictions to the state’s high court, which resulted in a precedent-setting ruling. The court ruled that an individual is guilty of wanton murder when they cause the death of another person “by wantonly engaging in conduct creating a grave risk of death…”
Attorney General Coleman said the ruling sets an “important” precedent.
“Kentuckians who expose their children and loved ones to these deadly drugs will be held accountable when tragedy inevitably strikes,” Coleman said. “While this ruling is a clear victory, nothing will bring back that young child, and we continue to mourn an innocent life lost too soon.”
According to court records, on March 18, 2021, Baker—who admitted to using her $1,200 stimulus check to purchase nearly an ounce of fentanyl just days earlier—awoke to find her 2-year-old son had accessed the drug and died from ingesting it. Toxicology results revealed the child had a fentanyl concentration nearly 10 times higher than what could be lethal to an adult.
Baker, who had struggled with opioid addiction for much of her adult life, purchased the fentanyl from a drug dealer in Cincinnati, court records state. She enlisted a friend, Shyann Holliman, and Holliman’s mother, Dana Bright, to drive her from Ludlow to Cincinnati and back. After obtaining the drug, Baker paid Holliman about $60 and gave a portion of the fentanyl to Bright for her other daughter.
Records show that on the day her child died, Baker awoke in the Ludlow home she shared with her partner, Edwin Suda, and her three children, including her youngest son, Jaxon Vogt. That morning, she visited a nearby methadone clinic and later injected fentanyl upon returning home before napping with Jaxon.
She awoke around 3:30 p.m. to find the toddler unresponsive on her lap. Her purse—containing fentanyl and drug paraphernalia—was reportedly open and scattered across the bed. According to court records, Suda, who had returned from a side job earlier that afternoon, heard Baker’s screams and called 911. He retrieved Narcan and gave it to Baker to administer while she attempted CPR.
First responders arrived within minutes and found Jaxon in critical condition. They rushed the child to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Toxicology results show Jaxon had a fentanyl concentration of 21.4 nanograms per milliliter in his system. An autopsy revealed acute fentanyl intoxication as the cause of death. The child’s lungs were filled with fluid and his brain had swollen due to oxygen deprivation. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, citing the toddler’s access to “an inherently dangerous substance” as the critical factor.
During the trial, jurors viewed a police interview in which Baker described storing fentanyl inside a cigarette box placed within a pouch, then securing the pouch inside a zipped purse tied to her bed’s headboard. She maintained that she kept the drugs hidden but acknowledged Jaxon could have accessed them by getting into her purse. Baker did not testify in her own defense.
On appeal to the Supreme Court, she argued the trial court had committed multiple errors. The Supreme Court dismissed each claim in turn.
Baker’s central argument was that while her actions may have been negligent or even reckless, they did not rise to the level of “extreme indifference to human life”—the legal threshold required for wanton murder under Kentucky law.
But the justices disagreed, saying Baker was aware of the dangers posed by fentanyl. They pointed to her own statement to police that she kept Narcan in the house for emergencies.
The Supreme Court emphasized that Baker previously saw her son playing near her drug stash and made only minimal adjustments to how she stored it. Those adjustments included placing her purse behind the bed or between the bars of the headboard, fully accessible to a curious toddler.
The court found that “a reasonable juror could conclude” that Baker’s actions, given the known lethality of fentanyl and the child’s proximity to it, demonstrated a “high disregard for life.”
Baker is serving her sentence at the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women in Shelby County.