A Dunnellon High School student gave a classmate a piece of candy he says he found in a bathroom stall that turned out to be laced with a hallucinogenic drug.
A school resource officer from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office was notified Jan. 11 about a 15-year-old student behaving erratically. The student told the officer that a classmate had given him crackers and a piece of candy because he was hungry, and that he felt different after eating the items. He said he knew the student who gave him the food but didn’t know his name.
The student’s parents gave school officials permission by phone for him to be taken to a local hospital to be evaluated. But while his sister was walking him out to her vehicle, the student became verbally abusive and ran way. He was located by the resource officer and school staff, who had his parents respond to the school. The boy’s father declined medical assistance for his son and said he would take him to the hospital himself to be medically evaluated and drug tested, a sheriff’s office report states.
The next day, the boy’s father reported that the drug test came back positive for traces of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a crystalline compound that is the main active ingredient of cannabis. The father also provided the name of the 17-year-old student who gave his son the candy, the report says.
On Wednesday, the resource officer interviewed that student, who said he was using the restroom when he heard the 15-year-old walk in. He said he and the subject were teasing each other when he found the piece of candy, wrapped in a red wrapper, in the bathroom stall. He said he offered it to the subject as a joke because he thought it was “nasty.” The student said he didn’t know what kind of candy it was or what it contained.
The student said the 15-year-old asked if he had done anything to it and he told him he had not – without mentioning that he had just found it. He said he did not intend to cause harm to the other student, the report says.
No charges were filed and the school said it would handle the matter accordingly. The 15-year-old’s father requested the incident to be documented.