On a December night in 2019, a 6-year-old boy drank from a water bottle that had fentanyl in it. He was rushed to the hospital and saved by Narcan, a drug that stops the effects of opioid overdoses.

A few days earlier, he’d been pricked by a needle that also was contaminated with the often fatal narcotic, according to court records.

His father, 32-year-old Joshua Jones, at first blamed his son’s exposure to the drug on “a phantom prostitute” who had used heroin in his truck — but there was no prostitute, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. He later told police that he’d used the water bottle’s cap to mix fentanyl in water and repeatedly used heroin in front of his son.

On Tuesday, Jones pleaded no contest to two counts of risk of injury to a minor — meaning he does not dispute the charges — in exchange for an agreed-upon sentence, according to Assistant State's Attorney Marissa Goldberg, who is prosecuting the case. He is scheduled to appear April 5 in New London Superior Court Part A, where major crimes are heard, where he'll be sentenced to 10 years in prison, fully suspended, with five years of probation, according to court officials — meaning he won't serve any time in prison.

On Dec. 17, 2019, Jones went to the East Lyme home his son lived in with his legal guardians, the boy's mother and stepfather, about 1 p.m. The boy had told his mother that he was tired that afternoon; she gave him a bowl of strawberries and a water bottle and he went upstairs to rest in the family's TV room, according to the warrant affidavit provided by the East Lyme Police Department.

A few hours later, the boy was asleep in the TV room when he started to snore loudly, as if he wasn’t getting enough air. The boy's mother checked on him and noticed he was warm to the touch. She turned on the light and saw that he was blue and had vomit near his mouth. His father started CPR and carried him downstairs as another family member called 911, according to the warrant.

The boy was rushed to Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London, where he was revived with Narcan. He later was transferred to Yale New Haven Hospital, where he told a social worker that a few days before, he'd found a needle on the bathroom floor after his dad slept over. He picked it up to place it on the bathroom sink and accidentally pricked his finger. The needle was filled with "poison" and belonged to his dad, he said, according to the arrest warrant.

The boy’s urine, and the water bottle he was drinking from, tested positive for the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl.

Jones, whose last known address was 2 School St., New London, did not have custody of his son at the time of the incident. The boy's mother told police she and her husband have had legal guardianship over the boy and his brother for five years because of Jones' continued drug use, the warrant said.

Jones told staff at the hospital that he previously had used heroin but had been clean and sober for more than a year and had been in and out of rehab for about a decade. He said he was being treated with suboxone, a drug often prescribed to treat narcotic dependencies.

Jones told police that he thought his son may have been exposed to heroin through a water bottle that was used by a prostitute — he said he often reused water bottles that he kept in his work truck, bringing them inside to rinse them out, refill and freeze them.

He sometimes shared the truck with a colleague, he said, who would leave job sites to have sex with prostitutes in the truck. Those prostitutes, Jones said, used heroin before having sex with his co-worker and sometimes would use the caps of water bottles to mix the drug with water, then toss the bottles carelessly in the truck, according to the warrant affidavit.

Jones told police that the needle his son found was one he’d found in the pocket of a green jacket he bought from Salvation Army. He put the needle in his pants pocket while he was getting ready one morning and said it must have fallen out of his pocket in the bathroom. When he returned to the house that night, the needle was on the bathroom sink, so he threw it out, he said.

Jones then told police that on Dec. 17, he'd used a water bottle cap to mix fentanyl with water and brought that water bottle into the house, refilled it and put it in the freezer. He wasn't sure that the water bottle was the one his son drank from the night he was rushed to the hospital. He also told police that the needle his son picked up would have been contaminated with fentanyl.

He later told police that while he was giving his son a bath that week, the boy told him that he had found his needle and pricked himself with it. He did not report the exposure to anyone.

The warrant affidavit states that Jones later told police "that the water bottle was contaminated with fentanyl by his actions and not a phantom prostitute and that he brought this water bottle and the needle into the home where the victim resides."

Also according to the warrant affidavit, Jones told police that on multiple occasions he brought the two young boys with him to places where he used drugs. He told the boys' legal guardians that they were going to the park, then injected fentanyl and heroin in front of the children.

"He would tell the victim and his brother that it was his 'candy,'" according to the affidavit.

t.hartz@theday.com