BATON ROUGE - The father of a 2-year-old boy who fatally consumed fentanyl after repeated close calls at a drug-filled home in Baton Rouge took a plea deal this week in a separate federal drug case. 

The case led to a reckoning at the Department of Children and Family Services last year, which failed to remove the boy from the home despite multiple warning signs.

The U.S. Department of Justice reported Thursday that Mitchell Robinson Jr., 33, pled guilty to a slew of drug charges, including possession of meth, fentanyl and heroine. 

Read the announcement here

Robinson was arrested May 11, 2022, a little more than a month before the death of his son, Mitchell Robinson III. The child's mother, Whitney Ard, was arrested in the boy's death after he died from a fentanyl overdose June 26. 

In arrest documents, East Baton Rouge sheriff's deputies wrote that the child had been rushed to a hospital on two other occasions for fentanyl exposure and had previously been saved with Narcan, a drug used to reverse fentanyl overdoses.

It was later revealed that the Department of Children and Family Services was made aware of the toddler's dangerous living conditions prior to his death, with several public officials calling out the agency for its failure to act. 

Robinson, who was jailed at the time of his son's death, filed a lawsuit earlier this year blaming the agency's negligence.

Similar cases were reported in the following months, ultimately leading to the resignation of DCFS Secretary Marketa Walters.