Mother grieving her baby’s sudden death learns drugs found in his system
Randi Freeman is the mother of Elijah Hugh Wedel.
By Jocelyn Schifferdecker
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EL DORADO, Kansas (KAKE) — A mother in El Dorado is still grieving after her baby boy suddenly died in April 2024. Now, the autopsy report is showing there were drugs in the baby’s system.
The last nine months have been some of the hardest for Randi Freeman, the mother of Elijah Hugh Wedel. She says she misses him every day, and is still trying to figure out how to go through life now that he’s gone. She moved from her home in Salina to El Dorado so she could be with her mom. She says she couldn’t bear to be in the same place without Elijah.
“I always dreamed of watching him take his first steps or what it would feel like to be called ‘mom,’ and I never got to experience it,” she said.
She had big plans for him, to give her a better life than she had growing up, and now she’ll never get to watch him grow up.
Instead, all she has to remember her child is a small blue box, photos, and only four months of memories.
“His hospital bracelet, this is the outfit he came home in,” she said while showing some of the things she’s kept. She also has a print of his handprints and footprints that the hospital gave her. She plans to tattoo this over her heart. A way to forever remember her son.
She still can’t believe he is gone.
“I think about him and I look at pictures, and then look at pictures of him when he’s already deceased, and it’s hard to believe that something you made someone can just take away so easily,” she said as tears streamed down her face.
On April 25, 2024, Freeman says she found out her baby was in the Salina Regional Hospital. The doctor’s notes she provided us show he had no brain activity upon arrival. The next day, April 26, Elijah took his last breath at four months old.
“He didn’t even look like him. All the machines hooked up to him. His eyes were practically glued shut,” she said while recalling this horrible day.
Freeman says her son’s babysitter Amanda Vinardi was watching him at her own house in Salina when a neighbor called 911. In the same documents, it says responders found the baby facedown in the crib and that police were concerned about drug paraphernalia in the home.
“They had to restart his heart four times,” she said.
The report from the hospital that Freeman provided says doctors found meth and amphetamines in her son’s system.
Last week law enforcement booked the 42-year-old Vinardi into the Saline County Jail. The sheriff’s office website shows she is facing charges of aggravated endangering a child, use and possession of drug paraphernalia, and possession of marijuana, opiate, narcotic, or certain stimulant.
The Saline County district attorney did not confirm if these charges are in connection to Elijah’s death.
Freeman says she will keep fighting for her baby and get him justice, adding it’s the only thing that’s been getting her through.
“Getting his story out there so other mothers can see that even if you think it’s not gonna happen to you it can,” the grieving mother said.
Freeman says she met Vinardi through a family member.
Vinardi appeared in court today and has her next appearance January 16.
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