Woman accused of forcing teenage daughter to deliver drugs for years
YORK COUNTY, Neb. (KOLN/Gray News) – A mom in Nebraska is facing several felony charges after using her daughter to sell drugs, according to authorities.
Deputies with the York County Sheriff’s Office arrested 36-year-old Shantell Perkins on Thursday.
The sheriff’s office said the investigation began when a teenage girl told her therapist earlier this month that her mother had been forcing her to deliver drugs for several years. This information was reported to authorities.
Perkins lived with the teen girl and two other children at a home in Benedict. All three children have since been removed from her custody.
During interviews, the children told deputies that Perkins regularly took pills — ranging between prescription hydrocodone, oxycontin, morphine and Xanax — an arrest affidavit shows. They’d commonly come home to find her unconscious, but she would later explain to them that she suffered a seizure, deputies said.
One child told police they begged Perkins not to take the pills while home alone, fearing “they might find her dead,” authorities wrote.
Records show police had been called to Perkins’ home multiple times since 2022.
The teen described arguments with her mother often turning physical, saying she was whipped with a belt or a coat hanger or sometimes being backed into a wall.
Deputies said they believe the other two children may have suffered similar abuse, and they wrote that Perkins would often accuse her children of stealing her pills.
In the meantime, Perkins had been using the teen girl to deliver Xanax, morphine and other unidentified pills to multiple people over the years, according to the affidavit.
The deliveries began sometime in 2018 when the family lived in South Dakota, deputies said.
According to court records, the girl delivered pills on at least 50 occasions between two communities in South Dakota, then in the Nebraska towns of Benedict, York and Seward.
Authorities think Perkins would persuade the girl with promises of gifts for making the deliveries, and other times she’d threaten to ground the teen if she disobeyed.
Perkins is charged with possession of a controlled substance, using a minor to distribute controlled substances and child abuse.
Jail records show Perkins’ bond was set at 10% of $50,000. Her first court hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
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