Records raise new questions about Alameda County’s response to toddler fentanyl death

Just two days after 23-month-old Kristofer Ferreyra died of a suspected fentanyl overdose, an Alameda County social worker recommended keeping his three young siblings in the care of his mother, despite police having just found tin foil, baggies and other drug paraphernalia in their house.

In fact, for reasons that remain unclear, Kristofer’s death wasn’t even noted in a social worker’s initial assessment of the home, according to new records obtained by this news organization.

Not until three weeks later, on Nov. 7 — when news of the toddler’s fatal overdose became public and Fremont police announced the arrest of his mother on suspicion of murder — did social workers file a new assessment, acknowledging the toddler’s death and recommending the other children in the home be placed in the county’s care.

It’s just one of the troubling inconsistencies revealed in social workers’ records regarding Kristofer that raise questions about the county’s handling of child welfare cases — particularly amid an opioid epidemic that has killed three Bay Area children younger than 2 in the last six months, including Kristofer.

“You don’t leave kids in the home when there’s a child death,” said Paula Rohde, a licensed social worker who frequently testifies in court as an expert witness in child abuse cases. “The goal is to preserve families and keep families together. But when there’s a child death, that’s kind of like: Game over.”

With the proliferation of fentanyl — an opioid 50 times more potent than heroin — the stakes for children exposed to drugs have never been higher. In Santa Clara County, the deaths of 3-month-old Phoenix Castro and 19-month-old Winter Rayo resulted in felony charges against their parents and a reckoning for the county’s Department of Family and Children’s Services, with supervisors calling a hearing December 19 to review social workers’ policies.

In Alameda County, the issues with social worker response to alleged abuse date back even further. In 2015, county social workers failed to remove 3-year-old Mariah Mustafa from her foster care home after an overdose, resulting in her death two weeks later when she once again ingested methamphetamine. In another case, an investigation by this news organization into the 2022 death of 8-year-old Sophia Mason found that social workers were alerted seven times to her abuse, but often declined to adequately intervene.

The 29 pages of documents released in Kristofer’s case contain numerous redactions and omissions that make a thorough reading of his file nearly impossible. Also not released were call logs, investigation summaries and narratives filed by child abuse call screeners — all of which are typically found in a child’s case file.

“This is either the most inadequate social work I’ve ever seen, or the county is ambitiously hiding from the public what actually happened in this case by concealing the documents that — by law — they’re supposed to provide,”  said Ed Howard, senior counsel with the University of San Diego School of Law Children’s Advocacy Institute, who co-wrote the law mandating disclosure in child death cases.

Kristofer’s grandmother, Viviana Vera, also voiced concerns about whether better communication on the part of police officers — as well as between social workers and the children they’re tasked with protecting — could have saved Kristofer’s life.

Social workers “need to just talk with the kids,” said Vera, 44, adding that family members “can only do so much.”

Exactly how Kristofer got his hands on the stash of fentanyl that allegedly belonged to his mother, Sophia Gastelum-Vera, remains a mystery. Police suspect his mother used fentanyl the night of Oct. 17 and went to sleep in her bedroom, along with her boyfriend, Frank Avina, as well as Kristofer and her 4-year-old son.

Within hours of the boy’s death the following morning, Fremont police searched the home and found cut straws, tinfoil and empty baggies — some of which later tested positive for fentanyl, according to court records. Investigators also found text messages the mother sent to her boyfriend asking him to clean the room.

Just two days after Kristofer’s death, an Alameda County social worker checked a box in an Oct. 20 assessment suggesting “the physical living conditions of the home are hazardous and immediately threatening to the health and/or safety of the child,” according to the newly obtained documents.

Still — in a move that dumbfounded child welfare experts — the social worker recommended leaving Kristofer’s siblings in the home, with a safety plan, the records show. After briefly living with their grandparents, the children returned to the home from late October until Gastelum-Vera’s arrest on Nov. 7, Vera said.

Alameda County social workers only reversed course Nov. 7, when Gastelum-Vera was arrested and police announced the boy’s death. A subsequent assessment that day struck a different tone — noting a “child death due to fentanyl in their system” and deeming the house “unsafe.”

The account directly contradicts a statement to this newspaper by DCFS spokeswoman Sylvia Soublet, who said the siblings “were never placed back into the mother’s home.”

There is no indication that Gastelum-Vera’s other children were harmed during the period they remained with their mother.

Gastelum-Vera was later charged with involuntary manslaughter, along with felony child abuse and two drug-related misdemeanors. She was held Sunday morning at the Santa Rita Jail and has been cleared by a judge to join a residential treatment program while facing the charges.

The suggestion that Gastelum-Vera had been using fentanyl came as a complete surprise to Vera, who described her daughter as a doting and loving mother who did little but care for her four children — two of whom have significant medical challenges that require near-constant attention.

“She really didn’t spend time outside of the house with her friends, or didn’t really do anything but be with her kids,” Vera said. “At times it would be concerning because I’m like, ‘Sophia, you need a little bit of an outside life, I can watch your kids.’ And she’s like ‘No, I don’t want to. I just want to be home with my kids.’”

Kristofer was the youngest of four children in a house that his mother and siblings shared with his maternal great-grandfather. Court records show the home was frequented by police for the latter part of the toddler’s short life.

Officers responded to a domestic violence call there in August 2022 involving the boy’s father, court records show. A few months later, in December 2022, officers returned to arrest his mother’s new boyfriend, Frank Avina, on a felony weapons charge after officers suspected he owned a revolver while on probation. And they arrested Avina another time in June 2023 following a rooftop chase that began at the house and ended with him jailed on another weapons charge.

Throughout it all, Alameda DCFS records show the agency received a lone report of suspected child abuse at the house in November 2022. In that case, social workers took months to complete a basic assessment determining whether Kristofer should remain in the home, though such assessments are normally due within 48 hours of a social worker’s initial contact with a child.

At a bare minimum, the paperwork delays suggested social workers did not take the November 2022 assessment seriously, Rohde said.

“You really need to keep things as timely and current as possible,” said Rohde, who spent two decades as a social worker and supervisor with Orange County’s child welfare system. “It’s really simple to do — there’s no reason not to get it done.

“When you’re not doing that until months later, what really is the quality of your investigation?”

Vera herself questioned why police never asked social workers to visit the home after Avina’s arrests in December 2022 and June 2023. And Vera complained that social workers never formally interviewed Kristofer’s surviving siblings in the weeks immediately following his death.

DCFS did not respond to multiple follow-up messages by this newspaper seeking comment. Alameda’s county counsel and county administrator also did not reply to a message seeking an update on an “independent investigation” into DCFS, which was prompted by Sophia Mason’s case and authorized by the Board of Supervisors in May.

Howard expressed astonishment at the county’s stonewalling — particularly when compared to actions taken by officials in Santa Clara, where county executive James Williams acknowledged in an interview with the Bay Area News Group that officials “dropped the ball” by not removing Phoenix from her father’s care before her death.

“The response so far in Alameda County is indicative of the fact that the children who are dying simply don’t have political juice,” Howard said. “I can assure you that the county board of supervisors would be far more ambitious in protecting the lives of children if these children weren’t dying in secret.”