There are countless ways to impress your schoolmates when engaging in the classroom rite of passage that is show and tell. Anything sharp, electronic or valuable tends to go down well, as do all creatures furry or poisonous.

But if it's staggering originality – not to mention violent parental panic – you're after, then whipping out a few dozen bags of your stepfather's heroin did the trick for a precocious five-year-old from Connecticut.

Unfortunately for the stepfather, shortly after the boy showed his classmates the drugs, his teacher told the police.

Things started to go wrong for Santos Roman, a 35-year-old from Bridgeport, when his stepson took his jacket to Barnum school on Monday — apparently unaware of the 50 packets of heroin secreted inside it.

According to the Connecticut Post, when the time came for show and tell, the boy reached into the coat and pulled out 10 little plastic bags each containing five folds of heroin.

The bags were promptly seized by his teacher and the police were called by the principal.

By the time Roman turned up at the school and embarked on a feverish search for his stepson, it was too late. Although he managed to find his jacket in an empty classroom and run out of the school with it, the drugs were no longer inside.

He was arrested by police, who had already confiscated the heroin, and taken into custody.

On Tuesday, Roman appeared in court charged with risk of injury to a minor, possession of narcotics, sale of narcotics and possession of narcotics within 1,500 ft of a school.

Following a request from the assistant state attorney – who argued that Roman had an extensive record of drug convictions – the judge set bail at $100,000 (£63,000).

The department of children and families placed the boy in the care of his grandmother, even though his mother went to the school to take him home.

Paul Vallas, Bridgeport's superintendent of public schools, praised the reactions of the teacher who initially noticed the drugs, which had a street value of around $500 on the street.

"Children," he added, "bring to school what they find at home."