Ronan man gets prison time for death of young son

A Ronan man was sentenced in district court in Polson Jan. 3 to the Montana State Prison for 10 years for exposing his 13-month-old child to fentanyl, which caused the child’s death.

Nyibe Jordan Ngyuen, 26, was convicted of negligent homicide by a Lake County jury Dec. 18 after a two-and-a-half day trial.

Deputy Lake County Attorney Lori Adams recommended a 15-year sentence with 10 years suspended, to run consecutively with Ngyuen’s earlier sentence of 20 years with 10 suspended in Missoula County for raping his 14-year-old cousin when he was 23. That case was tried in 2022.

However, Judge John Mercer handed down a sentence of 10 years with none suspended – meaning the defendant will spend at least 20 years under supervision for exposing his young son to fentanyl.

In a handwritten statement that he read to the judge, Ngyuen had asked for leniency, arguing that his conviction on negligent homicide “does not define who I am as a person, nor reflect on how I was as a father and parent.”

“If I could go back to the day, the past, knowing how my first and only son would tragically lose his life the way he did, I would have prevented it from the moment he came out of my wife's, Ms. Hammer's womb, but I can't.

“As parents, we all heard the term, no parent shall outlive their child. And unfortunately, I had to live with that nightmare.”

Adams countered that the defendant had been found guilty of two violent crimes, and that punishment guidelines for violent offenders say the sentence should be commensurate with the harm caused.

“There could be no more deeper harm than the death of a child,” she said.

The court also ordered Ngyuen to pay a $10 court technology fee, $100 for the cost of prosecution and $3,645 to the Crime Victim Compensation Fund, which paid for burying his child. He received credit for the 295 days he’s served since his arrest.

The mother of the child, Roberta Hammer, 23, was convicted of negligent homicide by way of a plea agreement. She was sentenced in district court in Polson Oct. 17 to the Montana State Women’s Prison for 15 years with 10 years suspended. Mercer presided over both cases.

According to court records, on Sept. 16, 2023. Hammer and Nguyen brought the child to St. Luke Hospital in Ronan. The boy was declared dead 50 minutes after arriving.

A deputy with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office responded and went through the “Sudden Unexplained Infant Death” form with the parents, who were still at the hospital. They told the deputy the child “put himself to nap” at about 5 p.m., and Hammer noticed the boy was unresponsive about two hours later.

An autopsy later determined the boy’s cause of death was “acute fentanyl intoxication.” Both parents gave “inconsistent versions of who, where and when they and other people smoked fentanyl in their residence.”

During his trial, Ngyuen testified that he had not been using fentanyl at the time of his child’s death. However, Adams told the judge he had tested positive for the drug, “albeit after the death of his son.”

If he had been sober that night, Adams said he should have been more attuned to what was happening to his child “and protecting him even more than the people who were high on fentanyl.”