Three 12-year-old girls in Florida are facing criminal charges after they allegedly poured red pepper into a middle school teacher’s soft drink.
The girls were arrested on Friday night, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, after their teacher at Deltona Middle School in central Florida complained to police.
Volusia County sheriff’s spokesman Gary Davidson says one of the girls was angry because their teacher, 52-year-old Jayne Morgan, had disciplined her Monday for dumping glue into another student’s backpack. The next day, the student brought crushed red pepper from her home and grabbed Morgan’s open can of soda off the teacher’s desk.
Davidson said that an investigation revealed two other girls were involved. One distracted Morgan while a second girl poured the pepper into the can, and then placed it back on the teacher’s desk.
When Morgan took a drink, she began choking and experienced shortness of breath, and later said she experienced a sore throat and stomach pains. She discovered the pepper flakes when she poured the soda into a clear cup.
According to local news station WPBF, the students will go to Volusia Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Daytona Beach. Two girls were charged with felony offenses of tampering with a consumer product and poisoning, and the third was charged with tampering with a product and being a principal to poisoning food or water.
The teacher also believes one of the girls may have stolen a laptop, WPBF reported. The teacher chose to press charges, a school spokesperson told the Orlando Sentinel.
“It should be noted this act was done in retaliation for the teacher upholding her duties and responsibilities as a teacher, maintaining control of her classroom and attempting to protect the other children from [the disciplined student’s] unacceptable behavior,” the sheriff’s department wrote in affidavits obtained by Florida Today.
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