Alabama mom arrested after 2 kilos of cocaine found in 3-year-old's backpack

A 35-year-old Alabama woman was arrested after local sheriff's deputies found "large amounts of cocaine" during a search warrant, including thousands of dollars worth of the illicit narcotic in the backpack of her 3-year-old child.

The Mobile County Sheriff's Office received information from a source about the copious amounts of cocaine at a home, the department said in a news release. Narcotics investigators then set up surveillance and say they saw the woman leaving, according to the sheriff's office.

The investigators followed the woman in a marked vehicle and subsequently conducted a traffic stop. During the stop, they found 1.5 kilograms of cocaine, a small amount of marijuana and a handgun in the woman's vehicle, the department said.

The discovery of the drugs in the woman's vehicle prompted the sheriff's office to conduct a search warrant at the home investigators saw her leaving earlier, the department said. 

What did Mobile County sheriff's deputies find at the home?

Upon arrival to the home, deputies say they saw the 3-year-old child wearing a blue backpack, the sheriff's office said. Two kilograms of cocaine were found in the blue backpack, they said. 

“It is absurd how reckless this situation was," Mobile County Sheriff Paul Burch said in a statement. "There was a total disregard for the law and the children’s well-being."

In addition to the drugs found on the child, the deputies found another kilogram of cocaine and two more handguns inside a black backpack, the department said. 

Four minor children were at the home during the search warrant but no adults were present, the sheriff's office said. The children's ages were 3, 8, 10 and 15, they said. 

"The cocaine and handguns were accessible to the minor children at that time," the sheriff's office said. 

How much did the drugs found during the search warrant cost?

The street value of all the drugs found during the search warrant is roughly $450,000, according to the department.

The woman was charged with trafficking cocaine, misdemeanor marijuana possession, tampering with physical evidence and four counts of chemical endangerment of a child, the sheriff's office said. Additional charges against the woman could be forthcoming, according to the department. 

“Say making a poor decision, I think that’s giving too much credit," Burch told WKRG-TV in Mobile, Alabama. "I think she made a deliberate decision to ride around with substantial amounts of drugs and a firearm in her car and leave her children home unattended with even more cocaine and more drugs, so that’s a deliberate action, not a poor decision."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Alabama mom arrested after cocaine found in 3-year-old's backpack