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wire servicesAuthorities don't know whether they will charge the child. They say she took orders from her mother.
MIAMI - Law enforcement officials are considering whether to charge an 11-year-old girl who they said sold heroin, sometimes in her nightgown, in front of her home in suburban South Miami.
The girl was taking orders from her mother, Alison Lolanda Davis, 36, who was charged with six felonies and two misdemeanors after a police raid on the home Friday evening, said Charles Blazek, a spokesman for the city of South Miami.
Police said a 60-year-old man who may be Davis' husband is also a suspect and remains at large.
For months, police surveillance teams watched the girl sell drugs to customers who came to the home by car and on foot, Blazek said.
"She did what her mother told her to do," Blazek said of the girl, now in foster care with her 7-year-old sister. "Whether she knows it's wrong or not, we don't know."
Blazek said South Miami police officers, who had observed the home since receiving a tip in October, had never seen such a young alleged drug dealer. Undercover officers who bought drugs from her twice before getting a warrant for the raid were shocked to learn the girl was just 11, Blazek said.
Blazek said South Miami police officials would meet with the Miami-Dade State Attorney on Thursday to discuss whether to charge the girl with a crime.
Neighbors in the area near the University of Miami campus said they had often seen the girl playing with other children after school.
"She was a very obedient and very nice child," said Troy Davis, 39, who lives across the street from the girl's ramshackle white and yellow house, which stands out on a block of neatly kept homes and lawns. Alda Larios, who lives on the same block, said the girl often came to her house to play with her children. "She was always sad," Larios said. "But she didn't cause problems."
A SWAT team that conducted the raid found heroin, Xanax pills, crack cocaine, a rifle and drug paraphernalia, including syringes, in the home.
The 11-year-old was taken to a juvenile detention center for questioning, then the sisters were released into the custody of the state Department of Children and Families and placed in foster care.
Blazek did not know whether the 11-year-old attended school, but she was wearing a school uniform the first time she sold drugs to undercover officers.
When officers bought drugs from her one evening last week, she was wearing a blue patterned nightgown, he said. She was wearing the same nightgown when the SWAT team raided the home Friday night, he said.
Davis is being held at a county jail for women pending her arraignment later this month.