By Jane Prendergast
Enquirer staff writer

DOWNTOWN - A passerby saw the man slumped over in his car and called 911, sending help to a scene police said they are seeing more of in Cincinnati - adults using heroin while their children are in the car.

Because the drug is highly addictive, abusers don't just want it, they physically need it, said vice Capt. Paul Humphries. So when they buy it, he said, they often stop almost immediately, cook it in the car and shoot up.

That's what officers think happened Thursday afternoon on Ninth Street behind City Hall. When police arrived about 1:30 p.m., they said they found a Florence mother, Bettina Mullins, out of the car and smoking a cigarette while her husband, Michael Mullins, 30, was inside, unconscious.

Their young daughter, 3, and son, 2, were in the car, too, Officer Kellyanne Best wrote in her report, and they were without car seats, diapers, bottles or food. Police found a syringe in the car.

After Best walked the children into police headquarters to wait for a relative to pick them up, Bettina Mullins, 33, was arrested and charged with two counts of endangering children. Her husband was taken to University Hospital after paramedics revived him at the scene.

Bettina Mullins told police they bought the heroin at 15th and Republic streets in Over-the-Rhine.

Statistics to show increasing problems with heroin were not immediately available Thursday. But anecdotally, officers say they're seeing both overdoses and confiscations more often.

That's troubling, Humphries said, for reasons beyond the fact that heroin is harmful to abusers. They use it and drive, he said, and it also makes them targets to be victimized by robbers and others.

The other concern is, unlike crack cocaine, heroin can be mixed with other things, affecting its purity.

"Heroin is more available than it was several years ago,'' Humphries said. "And it does worry us."

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com