Her daughter has been missing almost two months, and last week Lena Lunsford released a statement asking people to pray for her family and daughter Aliayah, 3. She also wrote she is fully cooperating with the investigators working to bring Aliayah home.
But the same can't be said for the authorities handling her six charges of federal welfare fraud. U.S. Pretrial Services Officer Brian Kilgore wrote in a statement that Lunsford is violating her probation and is not fully cooperating with her supervision. West Virginia State Police tracked her and her husband Ralph Lunsford to the parking lot of a store called Hot Stuff Cool Things in Clarksburg Nov. 1. Ralph told Kilgore he had just purchased "Sextary," a version of the synthetic drug "bath salts" for $52. Lena told Kilgore on Oct. 20 she did not know what bath salts were. She also told him she had not been to a "head shop" in "several months."
"It's much like the PCP back in the '70s. It's a medicine that makes someone very euphoric and happy. But there's a fine line for them to go over to being acutely psychotic," said Dr. Chris Goode, head of the Emergency Department at United Hospital Center.
But if a pregnant mother is taking the synthetic drugs, it will have an impact on her unborn child(ren).
"It'll affect breathing issues and then the central nervous system," Goode said. "You can only imagine the effect it'd have on the nervous system and the mother. If the mother is not doing well, then the fetus is not doing well."
State Police are investigating the bath salts incident and is waiting on lab results. Neither she nor Ralph has been charged.
Kilgore recommended she be placed in home incarceration and substance abuse treatment.
Meanwhile, Dr. Chris Goode calls bath salts an "epidemic" in north central West Virginia.
"We see it a lot. People are known regular users. But one bad dose of bath salts, heroin or K2 could be your last."
Lena Lunsford has a bond revocation hearing at Elkins federal court Nov. 28.
