The young father told police that he was alone with his newborn son when he inhaled the spray from a can of electronics cleaner, an increasingly popular choice for those seeking a cheap high.
Moments later, he went on to tell investigators, he awoke from a brief blackout to find his 15-day-old son bruised and disfigured. Kenneth George Ryan said he does not remember how the baby was hurt, but yesterday police announced that the 20-year-old Baltimore County man had been charged with murder.
Young people call the practice "dusting," a name taken from the "Dust-Off" brand product that uses a burst of gas to clean computer keyboards and other electronics.
Videos of teenagers shooting the cleaner into their mouths can be found on the Web site youtube.com. Wild-eyed, they laugh, chatter in altered voices and fall down.
But they risk their lives each time they inhale the substance, experts say. News accounts describe three teenage boys dead in a car with a can of Dust-Off and a youngster found dead in bed with the straw from the can in his mouth.
"Tonight between 12 and 1, I'm probably going to be sitting at the cemetery," said Jeff Williams, an Ohio police officer whose 14-year-old son, Kyle, died two years ago today after huffing, or inhaling, the gas. "I don't want anyone else to have to go through that."
Mike Gimbel, director of substance abuse education at Sheppard Pratt, said some parents might not think anything of buying a product that they assume is nothing more than canned air.
"They don't realize how dangerous it can be," he said, explaining that the cans contain a toxic mixture of compressed gases, coolants and cleaners.
Ryan's father, Philip Ryan, speaking by phone from his Perry Hall home, said that his son had long struggled with drug problems but that fatherhood had inspired him to get clean.
"He kept saying, `I want to be a good father just like you,'" said the elder Ryan, adding that his son had stopped using crack shortly before the baby's birth.
On Monday evening, Kenneth Ryan was watching the baby, Julian Woody, at the home of the child's mother in the 7600 block of Charlesmont Road in Dundalk.
Ryan told police that he inhaled a large quantity of cleaner and did not remember what happened next. He saw that Julian had been injured but said he did not know how the injury occurred, police said. Ryan alerted the mother and grandmother, and paramedics were called.
