The grandmother in the horrifying heroin overdose photos has been put behind bars.

It was the harrowing picture that made headlines around the world, a single image that illustrated the utter devastation caused by heroin addiction: a four-year-old boy sitting alert in the back seat of a car as his grandmother and her partner lay slumped unconscious in the front.

Now that woman, Rhonda Pasek, is behind bars, sentenced overnight to 180 days by an Ohio judge.

Dressed in a jailhouse jumpsuit and shackled, the 50-year-old pleaded no contest to child endangering, disorderly conduct, public intoxication and a seat belt violation during sentencing at East Liverpool Municipal Court, reports WKBN.

Along with the accompanying US$280 fine, Pasek’s sentence is the maximum penalty permitted by the state.

Meanwhile, her partner, 47-year-old James Lee Acord, was last week sentenced to a year in prison over the incident.

Rhonda Pasek. Image: WKBN 27.

East Liverpool authorities shared the image of Pasek and her Acord on Facebook earlier this month as a means of highlighting the scourge of “the poison known as heroin”.

The four-year-old’s mother, Reva McCullough, said she “bawled for four days straight” when she saw the image. The 25-year-old stripper and former crack addict yesterday told The Daily Mail she wanted her son back in her care.

“I don’t take drugs anymore. I haven’t even had a drink all night,” McCullough said. “Ironically, I have never taken heroin.”

Pasek had been awarded custody of the child just six weeks prior by Judge Thomas Baronzzi, who has since said there was never any indication she was involved in drugs.

“Had I known (Pasek) was unreliable, I certainly wouldn’t have given her the child,” he told local paper The Review.

The boy will now live with his great-aunt and great-uncle in South Carolina.