A Texas mother has been arrested for "intentionally" mixing her son's drink to give it to another student who bullied him, causing the classmate to be hospitalized.
According to the Bexar County Sheriff's Office, Jennifer Lynn Rossi, 45, mixed her son's drink with lemon, salt and vinegar before placing it inside a water bottle and sending him off to Legacy Traditional School in San Antonio.
Classmate Started Experiencing Nausea and a Headache After Consuming the Drink
Her son then gave the drink to another student during a gym class, which resulted in the classmate being hospitalized after experiencing nausea and a headache.
"On Tuesday, March 5, 2024, Bexar County Sheriff's Deputies were dispatched to Legacy Traditional School - Alamo Ranch for a sick child," the Bexar County Sheriff's Office wrote in a statement on Facebook. "Upon arriving to the school, deputies learned that the sick child was given a drink by a classmate during P.E. class."
"Through the course of the investigation, it was learned that the mother of the student who provided the drink, intentionally mixed the contents of the drink to allegedly prevent her son's drink from being stolen at school by other students," the statement continued.
"Although the contents of the drink were non-toxic, the incident resulted in a child being hospitalized," the statement added. "Hospital staff informed the investigator that the child victim required additional medical monitoring and would eventually be discharged from the hospital."
Rossi's Son was Bullied by the Classmate a Day Before the Incident
As pointed out by ABC News, an arrest warrant affidavit revealed that the mother told her son to give the concoction to the student who fell ill because he'd stolen her son's drink the day before. Rossi has now been charged with injury to a child causing bodily injury, added the report from Bexar police.
"Whether the allegations of bullying at the root of this situation are substantiated or not, there is never an excuse to take matters into your own hands and injure a child," Sheriff Javier Salazar told People in a statement Thursday.
