Parents Shavon and Kris Lindley are trying to understand how their daughter ended up intoxicated at Del Mar Hills Academy in April 2022, leading the then-second grader to be hospitalized with a .23 blood alcohol level. That's nearly three times the legal limit to drive.
“She'd been unconscious in the hospital. They had to shoot her full of Narcan because they thought maybe she'd ingested an opioid,” said her mother Shavon.
The details of what allegedly happened to the little girl are outlined in legal documents from a public records request given to NBC 7.
The documents note between January and March of 2022, the little girl's parents noticed several times when their daughter "bumped into walls after being dizzy and disoriented.”
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Those incidents led up to the big scare that happened on April 1, when, according to the documents, the little girl was walking to the car after school, got disoriented, fell and was taken to the hospital.
Doctors say the issue stemmed from her blood alcohol level being .23.
The Lindleys wonder if their daughter's water bottle was spiked, possibly as an April Fool’s Day gag or for some other reason, since students have to keep them outside the classroom, and she said her water tasted like lemonade.
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“When we found out what it was, we're like, 'Okay, was it tampered with?' You put those factors together and it’s April Fool’s Day, the bottles are outside, and it tastes like lemonade. There's enough there to put some weight to that," explained the little girl’s father.
According to an investigation, noted in the legal documents, the school and Del Mar Unified School District found the little girl got dizzy from consuming hand sanitizer, which the parents say the school hands out to children.
“If it was ingested sanitizer, let’s talk about what the responsibilities were," said Kris Lindsey. “If there is any negligence, I don't need them to admit it, I just want them to work with us and I feel they were just ready to sweep us under the rug."
The American Association of Poison Control and other organizations have warned of an increase in children eating hand sanitizer in school, since the pandemic.
And while the Lindley' say their daughter is okay, they're hoping for more cooperation from the district and wondering whether any similar incidents have happened to other children.
A written response from the district's lawyers says, the district is not aware of any other instances where students have ingested hand sanitizers or that it has been placed inside water bottles.
Because it was a unique situation with Lindley's daughter, she'll no longer have access to sanitizer.
The district sent NBC 7 the following statement:
The safety of our students is always a top priority of the District. Through investigation, we found out one of our students likely consumed hand sanitizer. As a result, we took measures to make sure that student no longer had access to hand sanitizer at our school. We are not aware of any other student consuming hand sanitizer. In addition, the investigation and evidence does not support the conclusion that someone tampered with the student’s water bottle.
