Father Tries To Poison Kids

by Myra Turner | More from this Blogger

07 Feb 2007 11:09 AM

Here's an example of one of those sad but true cases of parents gone mad. A 41-year-old Atlanta man has admitted that he poisoned soup and fed it to his two young kids in order to extort money from the Campbell Soup Company. He has plead guilty to communicating false claims. After placing "life-threatening foreign substances" in the soup and then forcing his kids to eat it, the man then called the company and claimed the soup was contaminated.

The man's children are 3-years-old and 18-months-old and unfortunately this is not an isolated case of his abuse. The kids were actually hospitalized twice in January 2006. The first time, was when the father forced the kids to eat soup laced with hot peppers and lighter fluid. Then he fed both kids the prescription drugs, Prozac and Amitriptyline. Both drugs are used to treat depression. He was arrested last March for the soup incident. His wife filed for divorce in May.

I love to read the newspaper but stories like this makes me wonder if I would be better off not reading it. Cases like this turn my stomach. It's bad enough when parents use their kids as punching bags but for someone to risk death or disability for the prospect of a few quick bucks-- that's just plain sick.

But unfortunately, cases like this happens all the time. Sometimes it's the parents who inflict the damage, such as in the case of a mom who tried to sell her child to pay off a debt and another who literally threw her child at the child's father. Other times, the damage is done by those we entrust our kids to. Take the case of a man who put his girlfriend's child in the freezer to cool the baby's rising temperature.

What's sad is that there are probably many more cases of abuse taking place than is being reported. How many cases of abuse end up being classified as "accidents"? We may never really know for sure.

See also:

Update: 3-Year-Old Wanders On Interstate

Learn more about Myra Turner

I'm a proud mid-life single mom with an active seven-year-old son, Tyler.

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Catherine Ipcizade (5617) 07 Feb 2007 10:33 AM

Oh no! This breaks my heart. Do you know what happened to the kids? Are they okay?

Myra Turner (1560) 07 Feb 2007 11:36 AM

Fortunately the kids survived but it could have been a truly tragic ending.