CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio — The complete "60 Minutes"-style investigative report can be watched here, but is perhaps best viewed on your big screen via the WBNS 10TV YouTube channel or our Roku and Amazon Fire TV apps – just search 10TV.
It’s a gift. One we don’t always want and one we never ask for, but hindsight always finds us. Unfortunately, it’s a gift that always comes too late.
“We got the call,” Captain Doug Davis said. “I got called out to the hospital.”
Capt. Davis with the Circleville Police Department was there.
“I was actually in the room when the baby took his last breath,” he said. “Definitely not something that will probably ever go away from my mind.”
He was there when Leightyn Lee died.
The 20-month-old, according to Circleville police, had ingested fentanyl. His 3-year-old brother, Landyn, was also there, sick and vomiting. Police say he, too, ingested the same drug.
During a two-month-long investigation, 10 Investigates uncovered the baby boy’s parents both had substance abuse issues and several run-ins with police.
Our investigation also uncovered a delay in a drug case against the boy’s parents getting sent to the county prosecutor’s office, leading to questions about if the system failed him.
“I’d always begged her to stop, to get help,” Davis said. “And this is the result.”
Davis says his career as a narcotics officer has involved frequent encounters with Leightyn’s parents Brianna Roush and Nicholas Lee.
“They have both always struggled with addiction,” Davis said. “Through the court system we got them help…several times…[and] they continue to go back to it.”
On February 19, 2021, Lee was cited for disorderly conduct after police say they were called to the Adena Health Clinic parking lot on reports of Lee and Roush fighting and appearing intoxicated.
Later that same day when Lee and Roush missed a scheduled appointment with Child Protective Services at their High Street home, police were called again. When Lee and Roush showed up driving separate cars, Lee was arrested for OVI. He told the jail staff he’d ingested 1.5 grams of fentanyl.
Police visits to their home were often.
“No matter how many times I called CPS, how many times my friend called CPS, how many times we called Circleville PD about noise complaints and everything…nothing was ever done,” Aisha Carter said.
Carter had been a neighbor to Lee and Roush for two years. D’Artangan Gilbert and his family are former neighbors.
In May 2021, Gilbert called police after seeing Lee and Roush’s oldest son walking around outside unsupervised.
“And my fiancée was trying to talk to him to find out where he lived and everything [and] he didn’t say nothing,” Gilbert said. “[He was] just quiet, crying.”
Anytime a call involves a child, Davis says CPS is contacted leading to a checklist of protocols from worker visits to getting other family members involved to help take care of the children.
“The thing that bothers me the most is that I had multiple conversations with Brianna that something bad could possibly happen to her child,” Davis said.
After the death of their son, Roush and Lee were arrested. Charges included involuntary manslaughter, child endangering and possession of fentanyl.
Police body camera shows Roush being arrested while on the phone with her mother.
“Just please don’t let me miss my baby’s funeral, mom,” she said. “OK, I love you. Tell Landyn we love him and we’ll talk to him as soon as we can.”
Roush was pleading with her mother, begging to be released for her son’s funeral.
“That’s the final time I’m gonna see my son,” she said to officers.
According to Davis, both Lee and Roush were granted permission from the court to attend Leightyn’s funeral.
For Roush and Lee hindsight might be doing whatever it took to keep Leightyn alive.
The same could be said for the system.
“I can’t speak for what could happen or would happen,” Capt. Davis said. “It would be possible that the children wouldn’t be with mom and dad.”
In 2020, 10TV has learned Lee had not one but two run-ins with Circleville police in the same week.
The first was on August 13 when records say police used a confidential informant to purchase a gram of heroin from Lee. This deal was inside Lee’s apartment and the informant told police during the deal Roush and her 1-year-old child were present when the transaction occurred.
Six days later, Davis reported seeing a “hand-to-hand” transaction from Lee to a female in a car in an alley near Lee’s home. There, police recovered a plastic baggie with a brown tar-like substance in it.
A search warrant to Lee’s and Roush’s home led police to seizing drug paraphernalia, multiple used and unused syringes, digital scales, weights and 3.5 grams of a brown tar substance suspected of being heroin.
Because of that both Lee and Roush were looking at trafficking, drug possession and possibly child endangerment charges. If convicted of those crimes, Pickaway County Prosecutor Judy Wolford says given their histories with drug use and CPS involvement, it’s very possible that Lee and Roush’s two children would have been removed from their home.
The reason they never were might be because those charges were never filed.
“I would certainly question why it sat someplace for seven months before coming to us,” Wolford said.
Wolford says the incidents happened in August 2020, but the evidence was not submitted to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation until four months later. Because of BCI’s workload being backed up, the results confirming the drugs that were seized were heroin weren’t back until April 2021.
Wolford says those results weren’t scanned into her system until November 2021, even though Davis says a packet was submitted to Wolford’s office in September 2021, 13 months after Lee’s arrest.
Wolford says that the timeline is not standard and is very much inexcusable.
“Whose fault is this?” 10TV’s Bryant Somerville asked Wolford.
“Well, I think that’s a police department question, not a Judy question,” she said. “Only they can tell you what they were doing with this information for all that time. I don’t know the answer to that.”
And that’s why in December 2021, one month before Leightyn Lee overdosed, Wolford declined to press charges.
“I can’t explain that to a defense attorney why there was such delay in getting that information to us so we could even pursue charges,” Wolford said.
“I…sure, we’ll take the blame,” Davis said. “I mean, it’s definitely our case, but I don’t think we can take all the blame.”
Davis says there were issues with COVID, short-staffing and caseloads backing up.
He says the department at that time was also working on two other cases involving children in a home where fentanyl was also present.
Even with all of that, he says the department tried to get the ball rolling against Roush and Lee by sending a grand jury packet to Wolford in October 2020, but Wolford refused it until the lab results were back.
When results were finally in April 2021, he says both police and Wolford’s office received an email from BCI where they could both view results. Wolford says no such email was ever sent to her office.
“There are going to be people who watch this and think had this happened in a timely manner…had you gotten the paperwork, had you charged them…would this baby still be alive today,” Somerville asked Wolford.
“And I think that’s a good question,” Wolford said. “The answer to that is none of us know.”
Even if convicted of possession and trafficking, Wolford says it’s likely Lee and Roush would have never gone to prison. Still, hindsight has many questioning: Could it have made a difference?
“I think we all fail when a child dies,” Wolford said. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s the police department, our office, children services, doesn’t matter who it is…we’ve all failed when a child dies.”
And how with so many holes in communication can Pickaway County do better?
“This seems like this is one of those cases where people love to say ‘The system failed that child’,” Somerville told Davis.
“Yeah, and I would almost agree with them,” Davis said.
Davis was there.
“The nurse never stopped praying for that kid and to watch her go through all of that effort for nothing is heartbreaking,” he said.
He was there when Leightyn Lee took his last breath. Now, he’s here, wondering.
“I would like to say that, yeah, the baby could still be alive today,” he said. “I’d love to say that. But, if it wasn’t that day it could have been a different day.”
A gift. A curse. Davis calls it unacceptable.
“I think, collectively, and I’ve said this about many other cases…the system is broken,” Davis said. “And I don’t know how to fix it.”
In hindsight maybe the answer is foresight. Without it, clarity will never find us until it’s too late.
Lee and Roush are currently in the Pickaway County Jail where they are charged with offenses including involuntary manslaughter, endangering children, possession of drugs, trafficking and tampering with evidence.
Both Lee and Roush declined comment for this story. Roush’s mother (Leightyn and Landyn’s grandmother) provided names, ages and pictures to be used.
The complete "60 Minutes"-style investigative report can be watched here, but is perhaps best viewed on your big screen via the WBNS 10TV YouTube channel or our Roku and Amazon Fire TV apps – just search 10TV.