Alcohol and children are never a good combination, combined with neglectful parents, it equates to a bad news.
All this culminated in a 10-year-old boy wandering around his neighbourhood drunk and naked!
The incident happened in Spring Hill, Florida in the US. According to an ABC Action News report, the young boy was found wandering around drunk and naked at night on February 14.
Love + Alcohol + Kids = Bad
On a day where couples across the world were celebrating love and popping a champagne bottle or two, this boy was also doing his own celebrating by allegedly drinking brandy continuously for the entire day.
Where was his mother, caretaker or guardian in all of this, you might ask? Well, his caretaker, Nedra Byrd, 31, was allegedly sleeping on the sofa, knocked out by her own alcohol overconsumption.
Lost and found
The boy was found by a concerned neighbour who had spotted him wandering around without his clothes and looking lost. Recognising the boy, she had brought him into her house and put some clothes on him before walking him back to his home.
When the police arrived, they also found a man who was sitting next to Byrd, who was still deep in slumber.
They haven’t a clue
According to the ABC Action News report, when the police questioned the man as to the whereabouts of the boy he simply said, “He should be in his room, I just checked on him before I went to the bathroom.” The line of questioning however made him look around the house for the boy, and found that the boy was nowhere to be found.
The woman on the other hand, after being coaxed into waking up, laughed at the police when they informed her that the boy was walking around the neighbourhood naked. She appeared intoxicated and allegedly said that she was “drunk as hell.”
Byrd, the caretaker, has since been arrested for neglect.
Alcohol and kids
The boy was found to have a blood alcohol level of .108, way above ‘safe’ blood alcohol levels in an average adult. This level is equivalent to about three alcoholic drinks and according to investigators, the boy had told them that he had been drinking brandy for most of the day.
This is worrying as the boy was already displaying symptoms of intoxication such as staggered walking, lowered sense of inhibition (which could have led him to strip) and an impaired sense of judgement.
Other effects associated with this alcohol level include:
- the possibility of temporary alcohol poisoning
- slurred speech
- staggered walking
- emotional swings
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