(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Two seventh-grade girls were arrested on charges that they served poisoned cake at their middle school cafeteria to about a dozen students who became ill and had to be taken to the hospital.

Lawyers for the girls said the cake was a prank, and that they had no intention to harm anyone. Lab tests showed the icing on the cornbread cake contained an expired prescription drug, bleach, clay and Tabasco sauce.

"They took it into the cafeteria at lunch time and began passing it out to students, just whoever would take a piece," said Jay Dillon, spokesman for the Cobb County School District in suburban Atlanta.

Some of the students started vomiting after eating the cake, officials said. Eleven of the students, mostly seventh graders, were treated at a hospital and released, Dillon said.

Police said one of the teens was charged with 12 counts of aggravated assault with intent to commit murder, among other charges. The other girl was charged with the same 12 aggravated assault charges.

Comments

You know, it's kind of depressing, but...

[torrain.livejournal.com]

I'm finding this news item to have the second-highest combined factor of interesting and not-depressing of everything you've posted today.

(The new Bible translation takes first place, BTW.)

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

"Tabasco Sauce in icing"==="prank".

"expired prescription drug in the same"==="criminal idiocy"

"bleach"==="you're going to have a very hard time that wasn't with the intention of murder, pal"

Clay, on the other hand, might be OK. At least, going by the amount of clay dust my potter cousins inhale on a daily basis, it doesn't kill immediately.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Clay isn't actually inherently dangerous to eat. In fact, there are people who do it deliberately to cleanse the bowels - and while I'm sure you could get sick from enough of it, I doubt it would kill you unless you got the the point where it stopped being "poisoning" and started being "choking"

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

And I suspect most 12 year olds wouldn't believe that drinking anything less than a whole glass of bleach could really hurt you beyond making you puke. I won't condone what they did; it was stupid, but attempted murder it wasn't.

...what the -hell-?

[torrain.livejournal.com]

I did. I can't think of anyone who didn't. And while I've occasionally been accused of hanging out with non-stupid people to the point where my assessment of humanity is distorted, I would be kind of surprised if a couple of kids who are apparently trusted alone for a few hours--either to make the cake or to go out and buy one themselves--have not learned what the little skull and crossbones and 'splody-type pictures on bottles mean.

If, at twelve, you are actually capable of saying to yourself "Gee, there's a poison label on this stuff, I'll be a little sick but basically fine if I drink a glassful", then either you are a blithering idiot who shouldn't've been let out unsupervised or your guardian has successfully instilled dangerous beliefs in you and is hoping you'll kill yourself because leaving you alone in an apartment playing with a butane torch didn't work when you were younger.

I might believe that they didn't think about it, and didn't intend to commit murder[1]. Until the introduction into this mess of a parent or other adult who convinced them both of something on the same level as "Yes, the element feels hot, but if you push your hand down on it really hard it doesn't hurt", I won't believe that they did think about it and thought it would be okay.
---
[1] I realize it's also possible that they did intend to commit murder and were just really stupid about doing it.

Re: ...what the -hell-?

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

I'm sure they're more than aware that yeah, bleach can kill you, but it's all about how much you take, just like anything else.

They'd diluted the shit out of it with those other wonderful bits (with little or no clue how those things all reacted with each other).

Stupid: Absolutely.

Homocidal: Only if you can't be bothered to think about it for five minutes.