High school student hospitalized after eating possibly drug-laced cookie

Published 11:00 am Thursday, June 4, 2015

METHUEN, Mass.  — A Methuen High School student was hospitalized after her father said she purchased and ate a drug-laced cookie and got sick at school, according to a police report.

But School Superintendent Judith Scannell, in an email, said there’s been no confirmation the cookie was drug-infused.

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A nurse at the high school called for an ambulance after the female student said she did not feel well and told the nurse she lost “consciousness for a short time,” according to the police report, filed after the May 21 incident.

The girl’s name and age were redacted from the police report, obtained through a public records’ request to Methuen Police Chief Joseph Solomon.

The nurse called for an ambulance at 9:30 a.m. and the girl’s father was notified shortly after, according to the report written by Officer James Mellor, who is assigned to the high school. 

At 12:30 p.m. that day, the girl’s father called from the emergency room at Holy Family Hospital “to say his daughter got sick at school today from eating a cookie that was laced” with a “kind of drug,” Mellor wrote.

The father, whose name is also redacted from the police report, said his daughter purchased three cookies from a male student for $10. The girl was told the cookies would “make her feel good” her father said, according to the report.

“A short time after eating the cookies she began to feel sick and went to the nurse’s office,” Mellor wrote.

The girl told police she did not know the name of the student who sold her the cookies and gave police a vague description of him.

The student “stated she did not remember where in the school she purchased the cookie other than in some hallway,” according to the report.

A “completed urine test” at the hospital showed “only marijuana” in the girl’s system, Mellor wrote.

The father turned over a plastic bag with some cookie crumbs in it for testing by police. Test results are not yet available, Solomon said.

Scannell, in an e-mail, confirmed the student went to the nurse’s office not feeling well and that the “student was sent to the hospital for unknown medical reasons.”

“At that point, the student claimed that they purchased a marijuana cookie at school. There are no facts, confirmation, guarantee the cookie was drug induced,” Scannell wrote.

She said the student returned to school two days later.

Scannell said no similar incidents have occurred at the high school and an investigation into this incident is ongoing.

No one has been charged as a result of the incident, Solomon said.

Jill Harmacinski of The Eagle-Tribune reported this story. Follow her on Twitter @EagleTribJill.