‘Hurt my heart’: Maryland mom outraged after girl, 6, found drunk in school

A 6-year-old girl was found drunk at her school in Maryland, said her mother, who demands a thorough investigation into how it happened.

Alarming video taken in a nurse’s office at Princeton Elementary School shows the first-grader stumbling.

“That’s not my child,” her mother thought when she saw the video. “That’s not how I sent her to school.”

The mother (who News4 is not naming to protect her daughter) said she got a call Tuesday to go to the school near the end of the school day to pick up her daughter. She said the nurse and administrators weren’t sure what was wrong, and they told her that her daughter may have fallen and hurt herself.

“I’m asking, ‘Hey, what’s wrong? Are you OK?’ ‘Mom, I’m dizzy.’ And that’s her last words to me,” the girl’s mother said.

When she got to the school, she said, her little girl was unresponsive.

“She’s breathing heavy on the floor,” she said. “You know, even just calling her, she won’t wake up.”

Once they got to the hospital and doctors ran some tests, she got the diagnosis: acute alcohol intoxication.

She said it never crossed her mind her daughter might be drunk, but doctors told her the girl suffered alcohol poisoning, which can be fatal.

“It hurt my heart,” her mother said. “You know, I’m still not over it, that my child, I could be possibly planning a funeral for my child.”

While it’s unknown when the girl got ahold of the alcohol, she went to the nurse’s office after recess.

“Upon me asking her a question, ‘Do you remember what you drank?’ she said, ‘It was red, but it tasted like Kool-Aid,’” her mother said.

She said her daughter hasn’t said a lot about what happened. She said she’s traumatized and may fear getting in trouble or getting someone else in trouble.

She wants to know how her daughter got alcohol, where it came from. She said it did not come from their home.

Prince George’s County Public Schools issued a statement saying it’s aware of a serious incident and that “school staff responded promptly and followed established emergency protocols to ensure the student received appropriate medical care” and confirmed Child Protective Services has launched an investigation.

The girl’s mom said she wants a thorough investigation to make sure it never happens again to another child.

“The rules, procedures, safety measurements needs to be addressed, needs to be changed, for the education needs to be aware of what’s going on,” she said.

In a statement to News4, PGCPS also said it encourages families to speak to their children about not accepting candy, food or beverages from peers, unauthorized school employees or vendors and to have age-appropriate conversations about not using alcohol or illegal substances.