14-Year-Old Dies At Slumber Party After Drinking Soda Spiked With Alcohol

This is sad:

Alcohol was a likely factor in the death of a 14-year-old Northern California girl after she and three friends apparently drank vodka mixed with soda during a weekend sleepover, authorities said Monday. Paramedics found Takeimi Rao of Santa Rosa dead in her bedroom around 9 a.m. Sunday. Her parents could not be immediately reached for comment.

The girl, who was entering ninth grade in the fall, was hosting a sleepover Saturday night, Sonoma County sheriff’s Lt. Dennis O’Leary said. He said Rao apparently took a bottle of vodka from the kitchen cabinet and likely poured it into an empty plastic water bottle.

O’Leary thinks the girls, all 14, may have been mixing the liquor with soda.

“We believe they were drinking alcohol,” O’Leary said. “Right now we are investigating the death as suspicious, but we think it may be accidental.”

O’Leary said results from an autopsy being performed Monday and toxicology tests could take up to two weeks.

Rao’s mother told authorities she woke up early Sunday and saw two of the girls throwing up. They told her they were suffering from food poisoning from dinner earlier as she helped clean them up and put them back to bed.

The mother woke up about an hour later when her daughter and another girl began vomiting. Hours later, two of the girls had already been picked up by their parents and a third was in the shower when Rao’s parents tried waking their daughter.

O’Leary said criminal charges against Rao’s parents are unlikely.

Parents really need to do better at keeping an eye on their children. R.I.P.

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