Read the complete 2026-10-21 briefing
Washington must let child welfare act before fentanyl kills
The case renews the demand for HB 1092, a drug-safety bill that received no committee hearing and drew a floor push from Couture in 2026.
Washington should stop making child-welfare workers wait for “imminent physical harm” when fentanyl is in a child's home, and the Legislature should pass HB 1092 in 2027. Brentlee Lawrence, 5, died of acute fentanyl toxicity on March 13, 2025, after deputies found him unresponsive at a South Hill home, FOX 13 reports. The Pierce County Medical Examiner's Office determined he died from acute fentanyl toxicity1.
Brentlee's father, Kyler Lawrence, fled the home before deputies arrived, and investigators could not establish probable cause to arrest him at the time. Prosecutors issued a bench warrant on Sept. 14, 2026, once DNA results came back. Lawrence stayed on the run for five weeks, until a Thurston County deputy pulled over a BMW with no license plate near Yelm and found him in the backseat. Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders said Lawrence gave a fake name and had drugs next to him in the car. Pierce County prosecutors have charged Lawrence, 32, with first-degree manslaughter, and he pleaded not guilty; bail was set at $1.5 million1.
Brentlee's aunt, Cassandra Parsons, told the court: “They took a life.”1 So what did Washington law require before the state could step into that house?
The law requires imminent physical harm
The answer is in House Bill 1227, the Keeping Families Together Act, which was signed into law May 10, 2021. When it took effect July 1, 2023, it raised the legal standard for removing a child to “imminent physical harm,” according to Rep. Joshua Penner's timeline of the crisis at the Department of Children, Youth and Families2.
The department counted around 3,300 children removed from their parents in fiscal year 2023. In fiscal year 2024, just over 2,800 children entered the welfare system, and the Washington State Standard reports that the law at first did not count the presence of opioids in placement decisions. In 2024, lawmakers told courts to give “great weight” to that risk, and removals ticked back up3.
The bar went up and removals fell, and within a year the Legislature had to patch the law for fentanyl.
Fentanyl exposure became a fatal danger
Court documents state that Kyler Lawrence was buying, using and selling fentanyl in the South Hill home. Detectives found drug paraphernalia, foil and a plastic baggie with fentanyl residue near the bed where Brentlee was found, and state crime lab testing tied Lawrence's DNA to the baggie. His mother, Jordan Shank, reportedly found him next to her after he overdosed and admitted using fentanyl the day before; she was arrested for manslaughter in May 20251. Investigators say she told them Lawrence supplied the drugs4.
Rep. Joshua Penner's timeline says Brentlee “died while sleeping with a mother who admitted to daily fentanyl use.” The same timeline records that an infant died of fentanyl poisoning on Aug. 10, 2023, after the department closed a two-month investigation. It also records a baby born positive for fentanyl who died one month after the department opened a “Risk-Only” investigation instead of removing the child2. Pierce County Sheriff's Deputy Carly Cappetto said of fentanyl: “It’s the primary cause of a lot of our deaths, and we sadly are seeing more and more of children.”4
Lawmakers left a drug-safety fix stalled
Lawmakers had a fix in hand: Rep. Travis Couture and a bipartisan group prefiled HB 1092 on Dec. 18, 2024, to create a “rebuttable presumption” that active use of hard drugs creates an imminent risk to a child. As the Washington State Standard describes Couture's proposal, removal would be presumed necessary when a parent's use of most Schedule I or II drugs put a child at risk of exposure, and parents would win their child back with six months of sobriety or drug testing. The bill had some Democratic support but never got a hearing in the committee chaired by Rep. Steve Bergquist3. The session ended April 27, 2025, with no action on HB 10922.
On Feb. 16, 2026, Couture moved on the House floor to force votes on HB 1092, HB 2511 and HB 2692, and asked: “Why are we sending babies back to the same fentanyl-abusing home just a day after they were revived?”2
The fentanyl crisis demands earlier action
Tana Senn, who co-sponsored the law and now runs the department, gave the defense in plain words: “If we think that a child should be removed, we really need to prove it, and it shouldn’t be easy.” Rep. Lillian Ortiz-Self, the law's sponsor, said “removing, arbitrarily, kids from their homes without any due process is not the answer.” The department said Couture's proposal “goes too far and would make it more difficult to reunite children with their families even when it’s safe for them to return.”3
A rebuttable presumption is not arbitrary, because a parent can rebut it, and the path home is written into the proposal. The Legislature has already drawn this line elsewhere: amendments added to HB 2219 in February 2026 define “imminent physical harm” in child-care facilities as the presence of high-potency synthetic opioids or drug manufacturing equipment2. If high-potency synthetic opioids meet the definition of imminent physical harm in child-care facilities, why should fentanyl residue near a child’s bed not trigger earlier action? Couture answered that question himself: “I know that foster care is not perfect, but to me, it’s much more preferable and safer than being dead.”3
Pass HB 1092 in the 2027 session
Bergquist said that if child deaths and injuries did not improve, “there would be a need to revisit this policy next session.”3 Hold him to it, and hold every member of the House to three yes-or-no answers in 2027. Will HB 1092 get a hearing? Will it get a floor vote? Will you vote to treat active hard-drug use in a child's home as the danger it is?