maleficent

Girls charged over sickening cake
Georgia teens due in court after classmates fall ill

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Two suburban Atlanta schoolgirls accused of using a poisoned cake to sicken more than a dozen classmates are scheduled to appear before a juvenile court judge on assault charges Friday.

Twelve students suffered from abdominal pain, nausea and diarrhea, and three others have reported similar symptoms, police said. Investigators suspect the cake contained bleach and glue, among other substances, but Cobb County Police spokesman Cpl. Dana Pierce said the remnants of the dish have not yet been tested.

"We're looking for a lab, a private or government lab, to test that for us," Pierce said.

The girls, both 13, were being held in the Cobb County juvenile detention center in Marietta on Thursday. Each faces 12 counts of aggravated assault with intent to commit murder, police said.

One of the girls has been charged with an additional count of making terrorist threats after reportedly telling her classmates the cake they were eating contained bleach. But the girl's father said his daughter denies putting bleach in the cake, though she admits to mixing in glue.

The father called the incident "a bad prank."

"It wasn't anybody trying to kill anybody," he said, adding that his daughter suffers from Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism.

The girls can't be tried on assault charges as adults. But Cobb County District Attorney Pat Head said he needs to verify the contents of the cake before deciding whether other charges might be warranted.

"It could be that it stays serious, or it could be that the analysis of the cake says that there was nothing in there that was that harmful," he said. "In that case, we'll look at what the appropriate charges should be."

Authorities could not say when test results would be available.

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Is dad right? Is this a "bad prank"? Does this girls autism, excuse her from the alledged crime? Does the parent have any responsibility here?

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bermuDa

her punishment should be to finish the cake.

She suffers from social deficiencies, but that doesn't excuse her from trying to poison anyone.

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Shpoop

you dont need that comma!!

on a more relevant note, i dont see how they can assume it was attempted murder. if the tests reveal some sort of poison, then maybe. but then again, teenage girls probably dont have access to poison, so maybe bleach was the best they could think of. but whatever the case, the kids do need some sort of incentive to never do this again.

do the parents have any responsibility? well rarely ever can u say they have no responsibility whatsoever, but all in all, i wish people would stop asking this question. in my opinion, it kinda relates to the curret 'pussification' thread. first off, im not talking about abusive or maltreatment or ignoring your child. but in most cases, and im saying this as a highschool student (over 18) with many restrictions on him, its a moot point. teach the kid that they are 100% responsible for their actions, which they are, and everyone will be better for it. Keep taking the blame off of them, and viola! one more person doing more harm to society than good.

edit: did that make any sense ^

bermuDa

was this supposed to be funny? think you can be a grammar nazi without being insulting?

and yes I agree that we should teach the children that they're responsible for their actions, but when they have a social disorder like AS, the parents do have to work harder to get that message across. Should they be held responsible for their daughter's actions? of course not, but this should be sending up all kinds of red flags.

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Shpoop

sorry, i guess i should clarify. bitch, to me, is just a friendly, jestful term. i use it more as term of endearment...in fact i would never use it to cut someone down, there are fare more effective things. but i guess ppl dont feel the same way and ppl cant read my mind, so ill check myself next time

Soggybagel

Hmm grammar nazi? I prefer police...but this is clearly a case of asshole punks. Look there is a difference between a prank where you put *ahem* drugs in brownies or exlax in a pals soda. Then there is putting glue and possibly bleach!! Not only that but the fact that this was passed around to many people...makes me say punks.

bermuDa

i figured as much shpoop, just remember in the future that everyone reads what you type in their own voice, derisive terms, even in jest, don't translate well.

and come on, it's the internet... I care about a misplaced comma as I do about, say, a forgotten apostrophe, soggybagel.

I'd like to see the final report of what exactly was in that cake before I completely pass judgment.

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Slavakion

Yeah, that's important. Everybody has done something similar to this, right? Once we got one of our friends to eat this exlax chocolate. Took about one class to kick in (it was at school ). A stupid idea? Yeah. Funny? Hell yes!

But I would have never given anyone food with glue in it... even if it was "edible" Elmer's Glue.

StephenSa

I must respectfully disagree, not everyone has fed someone tainted food or laxatives. Even as a kid I knew that wasn't right. Putting something in someone's food that will cause an adverse reaction is just not cool. The kids should be punished. At 13 I don't know about jail time but a suspension from school absolutely. They should have to apologize to each victim individually and quite possibly be enrolled in counseling if this is part of a pattern of behavior. If MY daughter comes home from school vomiting and in pain because someone fed her shit then I guarantee there will be consequences.

Redlemon

Normal children don't do this. There is certainly a mental health problem here. As I've said in other threads, I think crimes connected to mental health issues require treatment, not punishment, especially in the young. This doesn't seem like a popular position on this board, however.

denim

The dad is trying to protect his daughter, clearly. They're both at fault, and in a big way. If he knew she was autistic, he shouldn't have let her make the cake unsupervised. Anything more needs to be left for later, after they test the "cake".

denim

Bleach is poison. We've all got easy access to lots of dangerous chemistry; bleach is just one example. Oven cleaner and dishwasher detergent are others.

Manic_Skafe

I've done some pretty dome things witout the least throught as to what my actions could cause and eventual reprocussions but the thought of poisoing someone's food is just too much for me. If there really was something in the cake those girls need a series of serious psychological evaluations and their parents should be held accountable for their actions. Surely the parents couldn't have known something like this was going to happen but if something moves your child to poison a cake then there must've been some signals that they weren't picking up on.

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denim

You should see a shrink. Adulterating food is criminal.

And no, not everyone has done such stupid crap like that. I, for one, did different stupid crap. So there.

water_boy1999

Sorry, I found this quite amusing since I counted over 15 grammatical errors in your post. There are more but I lost count after 15 so I rounded.

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william

At what point is a child not a child? If I had a child affected by this, I'd be calling for their heads. They made the cake and handed it out randomly to whoever would take it. If they have enough know-how to bake the cake, they had to have some idea what they were doing when they added bleach. (What - that wasn't vinegar?)
To be charged as a terrorist seems a bit like Ashcroft gone to wild. But this was a totally f'd up situation. I'd expect the father to step up and blame it on anything except personal responsibility.
Which goes back to the original question - at what age is someone personally responsible? And if they have a problem like the father says, why is he not at fault for keeping a better eye on her?
And that's only 1/2 the equation, the girl did not act alone.

f6twister

It seems to me that they knew what would happen by adding bleach and glue to the cake. I obviously don't have proof but I think is safe to assume that they didn't "lick the spoon" when they got done with their baking. They knew that it would make people sick and added it intentionally. I wish they could be tried as adults.

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tropple

Impalement or an extended public caning would be nice.

Oh, wait... Sorry. Wrong forum.

A good ass-kicking several years ago might have helped.

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joeshoe

This incident isn't a prank. Bleach? That could kill someone. A prank would involve laxatives or something to that effect. Definitely aggravated assault. We would need to see the lab report on the cake to see if the intent was murder.
And I don't see how having Asperger's syndrome excuses malicious behavior. It's not like it causes insanity or hallucinations.
I wonder how she got so many people to eat the cake in the first place...

miyamotomusashi

They said that they were going to poison food, and they then did. Warning people that you are going to commit crime before you do should not be counted as an additional crime. Also i thick that children should be charged as children not as adults unless they comit a truly brutal crime.
I have AS and i feel that it is not an excuse to comit any crime other then a socal one (eg slander, libal, indecent exposure, and others depending on the comunity).

sonikeko

I think that people are blowing this all out of proportion. Sure, it was a rotten (giggles) thing to do, but no one was seriously hurt by the "prank". I'm not saying that someone couldn't have been hurt, but what good is punishing here gonna do. She's a minor, and she won't be tried as an adult, so all she'll have to do is make some sort of restitution. Big deal. I put chalk in a teacher's coffee once. We all sat and laughed our asses off every time she took a sip, because she'd get this funny face, look at her coffee, and just keep drinking it. Now I know it's not glue or bleach, but seriously, I don't think this girl was trying to hurt anyone.

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Slavakion

Well, to clarify, a kid (not really a friend) brought in the chocolate and tried to pass it off. Apparently me and the friend who ate the chocolate were the only ones who didn't know it was Ex-Lax brand. I thought it was suspicious and didn't take any.

animosity

I remember when I was around that age my friends and I would mix all of our left over lunches(i.e. crusts, juice, chocolate milk, chili, soda, donuts, cookies, hotsause, cheeze wiz, chips... you get the point) into a large thermus and tell this kid to drink it. The kid knew what he was getting into, but we still shouldn't have subjected him to such a disgusting "milkshake"....

What these girls allegedly did was just messed up. YOU DO NOT POISEN YOUR CLASSMATES!! ...is that something that we really need to say?

Stompy

Hahahaha are you joking? He should see a shrink because he had his friend eat exlax chocolate?

What a threat to society!

Sorry, that, to me, is funny. Exlax/chocolate swaps would definitely be a funny prank.

Jeez, you people need to lighten up and quit with the technicalities (ie "Adulterating food is criminal"), not to mention that getting someone to eat straight up exlax isn't "adulterating" anything.

I gave my friend a Harry Potter jelly bean that tasted like vomit (seriously, the flavor was vomit), then I said, "Haha ok, take this brown one.. it's chocolate (it was dirt". He almost puked. Should I go to jail or see a shrink? Nope!

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Slavakion

Not to mention that I didn't bring in the chocolate, didn't know what was in the chocolate, and almost ate some myself...

waltert

being 13 is old enough, to me, putting bleach into someone's food isnt a joke, and if that happened to me and the girl wasnt convicted of something, I would be very compelled to commit real live assault on her.

Daoust

The biggest problem, in my eyes, is that there are people out there who sympathize with these two girls. Asbergers is a fairly serious social disability, but it does not excuse the students behaviour. If they were smart enough to commit that crime, they were smart enough to be aware of the consequences. I don't argue that they correctly articulated what those consequences might be, but I think they knew there would be consequences. I can see this debate going a long way, though.

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SiNai

Yeah, the big difference here is Exlax (or even glue..) < Bleach. If there seriously was bleach in that stuff, I would be really concerned. The girls' parents should definitely have supervised the making of this cake, as well. What about the normal girl? I don't know exactly what Asbergers is, but this asbergers girl had an accomplice in crime who knew exactly what she was doing. I guess we'll have to see what was exactly in the cake..

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Zeraph

Punks. I knew someone in HS with AS and he never hurt anyone. I say punishment and treatment.

This is why I never eat/drink anything from untrustworthy sources.

smooth

I suspect the girls better hope they get some jail time, or at least expelled so they can attend a different school.

At least, I know what I would do if some skanks tried to poison me...

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