Search Warrant Executed At Home After South Allegheny Middle School Students Sickened From Drug-Laced Candy
By: Erika Stanish/KDKA-TV News
GLASSPORT, Pa. (KDKA) -- Police executed a search warrant at a home in connection to an incident that happened at South Allegheny Middle School on Thursday morning.
Authorities said six middle school students were sent to the hospital after ingesting candy laced with drugs.
Police were seen carrying a box of evidence from the home on Erie Avenue in Glassport on Thursday night. No further details have been released from the police on what was found.
"I went into the auditorium and this girl had chocolate and they're like Cocoa Puffs things. And she was like giving it out to her friends," said Maleah Ball, a sixth-grade student at South Allegheny Middle School.
Maleah Ball told KDKA-TV that it was her friends who ate the candy and got sick.
"People were crying and freaking out," Ball said.
Ball said she was offered a piece of the candy but refused.
"I was actually really scared because, I mean, I was worried about them because I knew that something was gonna happen when they took that candy," Ball said.
Ball said some of her friends felt dizzy and nauseous. She said another friend couldn't feel her feet after ingesting the edible.
The superintendent said middle and high school students were ordered to shelter in place to keep the hallways cleared for medics.
Five students were taken to local hospitals by ambulance. Another student was driven to a hospital by her guardian.
Gordan Carter told KDKA that his granddaughter was one of the students who got sick. He said she was taken to Jefferson Hospital but was later taken to UPMC Children's Hospital because her heart rate and troponin levels were "extremely high."
Carter said his granddaughter is a good kid and an honor roll student. He said her condition "is very serious."
"It's frightening. I cannot believe what the other parents are going through. It hits me very emotionally because it very easily could have been her," said Lisa Ball, Maleah's mother.
The school district said the other five students involved have either received or are still receiving medical care.
District administrators said trained drug dogs searched the bathrooms, lockers, hallways and common areas of the building but didn't find anything suspicious.
Police nor the district have yet to say what was in the candy. As of now, no charges have been filed.
