A woman was arrested near San Antonio for allegedly trying to get back at her son’s bullies by mixing up a nasty concoction in a sports drink bottle.
Jennifer Lynn Rossi, 45, was booked in Bexar County on charges stemming from an incident at Legacy Traditional School in Alamo Ranch. As the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office explained in a news release, deputies responded to reports of a sick child who had been given an energy drink by another student during gym class.
Upon further inspection, that drink was found to contain lemon, salt, and vinegar, causing the child to experience nausea and a headache.
While under questioning, Rossi allegedly told law enforcement that she had intentionally doctored the drink in a bid to deter a bully who had reportedly stolen her 10-year-old son’s energy drink the day before. Her son also said in a statement that the victim had “said he had [the drink] and kept bragging about it,” according to NBC News.
Although the contents were not toxic, they were considered hazardous by hospital staff, who kept the student who ingested the beverage for observation before eventually releasing him. Rossi was booked in Bexar County jail on one count of injury to a child causing bodily injury.
“Whether the allegations of bullying at the root of this situation are substantiated or not, there is never an excuse to take matters into your own hands and injure a child,” Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said in a statement, according to People.
Studies have linked the drinking of energy drinks to multiple health issues in children, as previously reported by The Dallas Express. Research published in January suggested that drinking energy drinks correlated to heightened risks of suicidal thoughts, psychological distress, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), tooth decay, insulin resistance, and obesity.
“This evidence suggests that energy drinks have no place in the diets of children and young people,” said Amelia Lake, who was the lead author of the paper, according to Fox News.
Injury of a child qualifies as an assault offense.
In Dallas, according to the City’s crime analytics dashboard, 4,194 assault offenses have been committed this year as of March 6.
Downtown Dallas regularly sees considerably more assaults than Fort Worth’s city center, which is patrolled by a dedicated neighborhood police unit working in concert with private security officers.
This differential can be explained in part by the Dallas Police Department’s staffing shortage. The department fields just about 3,000 officers despite a City report calling for around 4,000.
Yet the Dallas City Council recently adopted a $654 million budget for DPD this year, which is considerably less taxpayer money allocated for police than in other high-crime jurisdictions, like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.
