Hudson County Dad Charged After Toddler Positive For Methadone

HUDSON COUNTY, NJ — The office of Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez said Tuesday that a Guttenberg man was arrested on a charge of endangering the welfare of a child, after his 3-year-old son was found unresponsive and tested positive for methadone in a hospital.

The office said that the man, Roberto Delgado-Gonzalez, 44, also works at a day care center in that town.

Delgado-Gonzalez was charged on Monday with endangering the welfare of a child, a second degree crime. He was arrested at 7 p.m. on Monday by Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office SVU detectives at the Hackensack Police Department.

Prosecutors say that just before 10 a.m. that day, members of the police department in Guttenberg — a tiny yet densely populated town on the Hudson River — responded to a basement apartment on 68th Street on reports of an unresponsive child.

The child was taken for treatment first to Palisades Medical Center in nearby North Bergen, then was transported to Hackensack University Medical Center, where he remains in stable condition.

During the investigation, New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency informed detectives that the child’s blood toxicology test was positive for methadone, the prosecutor's office said.

Delgado-Gonzalez is employed as a teacher at the League of Extraordinary Children, a daycare in Guttenberg, the office said.

Prosecutor Suarez credited the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office Special Victims Unit and the Guttenberg Police Department for the investigation and arrest.

The above charges are merely accusations and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

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