Children die in ball pits

[Dennis]

This is NOT gun-related, nor is this information confirmed. But it is too important NOT to post.

I just received the following e-mail from my daughter and son-in-law.

THIS INFORMATION IS *NOT* CONFIRMED!
but it seems rational enough to warrant immediate notification!

I have dropped the addressees and corrected some format errors.
Other than that, this is how I received it:
-----

Subject: FW: READ THIS!!!!!Even if you DON'T have kids I think you will find
this interesting.

The boys will no longer play in the ball pit at any establishment

-----Original Message-----

These 2 true stories....

Dillon and Casey were playing in the Ball Pit at Discovery Zone at the
Broadwater. Dillon lost his watch and was very upset.. (Gran and Pop had
given it to him)...
We dug and dug in those balls trying to find the watch. We found vomit, we
found food,
we found poop and other stuff I do not want to discuss. I went to the
manager and
raised ten kinds of hell.

Come to find out the Ball pit is only cleaned out once a month (I have my
doubts if it is that often). My kids will never play in another one.
-----
Hi, My name is Lauren Archer, my son Kevin and I lived in Sugarland,TX.
On October 2nd, 1994 I took my only son to McDonald's for his 3rd birthday.
After he finished lunch, I allowed him to play in the ball pit.
When he started whining later on, I asked him what was wrong, he pointed to
the back of his pull-up and simply said "Mommy, it hurts." But I couldn't find
anything wrong with him at that time. I bathed him when we got home, and
it was at that point when I found a welt on his left buttock. Upon
investigating, it seemed as if there was something like
a splinter under the welt. I made an appointment to have it taken out the
next day, but soon he started vomiting and shaking, then his eyes rolled back
into his head. From there, we went to the emergency room. He died later that
night.

It turned out that the welt on his buttock was the tip of a hypodermic needle
that had broken off inside. The autopsy revealed that Kevin had died from
heroin overdose.

The next week, the police removed the balls from the ball pit and lo and
behold - there was rotten food, several hypodermic needles (some full, some
used), knives, half-eaten candy, diapers, feces, and the stench of urine. If a
child is not safe in a child's play area then where?

You can find the article on Kevin Archer in the October 10, 1994 issue of the
Houston Chronicle. Please forward this to all loving mothers and fathers!

SPC Stacey N. Oats
Drug Demand Reduction Coordinator
[email protected]
(406) 841-3179
(406) 449-7689

=============================
Again! I have NOT confirmed this information!

Dennis

[Red Bull]

The i-net is a tricky thing. For all we know, Burger King made up the story and emailed it to 100 people randomly as anon forwards in an attack on McDonalds.
But, it also could very well be true. It is good of you to point out that it is unconfirmed.
As a microbiologist, it does not take a scary story for me to realize how much disgusting stuff there is in a McDonalds playland. I doubt I would let my kid play there anyway, not because of scary hypos and stuff, but because of much scarier stuff that we cannot see.

I have never taken herion, but I am skeptical of the story for a few logistical (and very possibly wrong!) reasons. I believe that heroin must be heated and melted and then injected. How would the kid get a herion overdose? A few factors have to be present: First, there has to be a hypo with some heroin in it, which is highly unlikely because what junkie is going to throw away a hypo full of heroin? Second, the heroin, I presume, would have to be fresh and heated into it's liquid state in order to be injected through the syringe. Otherwise, once it cooled it would solidify inside the syringe and could not be injected until reheated.
I highly doubt that a junkie could have gotten into the ball pit to physically inject the kid, thereby murdering him, with no one noticing, so we are presuming that a full hypo of heroin was tossed into the ball pit and it was logistically possible for it to be injected when he sat on it.
Also, according to the story it took a few HOURS for the child to die of a "heroin overdose". According to the story, the parent took the child home, bathed the child, called and scheduled an appointment and "soon thereafter" the child died of a heroin overdose. Makes no sense to me, since most heroin overdoses kill the person immediatly, not hours later.
I could be very wrong, I don't know much about heroin, but thost are are couple of red flags that rose in my mind.

Thanks for the heads up though!



[This message has been edited by Red Bull (edited April 13, 2000).]

[Gorthaur]

False (http://www.snopes.com/horrors/parental/archer.htm). www.snopes.com (http://www.snopes.com) is a great place to check these things out. Of course, it wouldn't be a bad idea to check out anything your child might be playing with.

------------------
Protect your Right to Keep and Bear Arms! (http://www.citizensofamerica.org)

[Dennis]

Thank you, folks. I freely admit this scared me BIG time!

I don't know "Jack!" about heroin, other than how to handle overdoses on the ambulance. So your explanation helps me a lot.

However, ANY ball pit I see in the future will be suspected of being filthy until *I* dig down and see it's clean.

Thanks again.

[DC]

Redbull...
The heroin powder is either a hydrochloride mixed in plain water or if freebase, it is dissolved in weak acid. Heating is merely to facilitate solubilization. In your scenario, once it entered the bloodstream, it would immediately solidify(due to immediate cooling) and the user would die from embolism.
A great many meds are alkyls or other non-ionic compounds and must be transformed into a "salt" (hydrochloride or hydroxide) in order to be soluble and useable by an organism....cocaine, lidocaine, benzocaine, xylocaine, oxymetazoline, etc...including many of the antibiotics you use in your work.

------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!



[This message has been edited by DC (edited April 13, 2000).]

[Sgt.K]

Go to http://urbanlegends.about.com
scroll down to "Essentials", click on "Current Net Hoaxes".

You'll find this and many other interesting items there.

Sgt.K
::::::::::::::
Needle in the Ball Pit

Contributed by Nancy Brown,
11/03/99:

Below is the earliest specimen of this text I received. It was sighted in November 1999 and the incident is alleged to have occurred in Sugarland, Texas. Other versions have circulated concurrently which name the location as Midland (presumably Texas) and "Midrand" (presumably a misspelling of "Midland").

     Hi, My name is Lauren Archer, my son Kevin and I lived in Sugarland, TX.
     On October 2cd, 1994 I took my only son to McDonald's for his 3rd birthday. After he finished lunch, I allowed him to play in the ball pit. When he started whining later on, I asked him what was wrong, he pointed to the back of his pull-up and simply said "Mommy, it hurts."
     But I couldn't find anything wrong with him at that time. I bathed him when we got home, and it was at that point when I found a welt on his left buttock. Upon investigating, it seemed as if there was something like a splinter under the welt. I made an appointment to have it taken out the next day, but soon he started vomiting and shaking, then his eyes rolled back into his head. From there, we went to the emergency room. He died later that night. It turned out that the welt on his buttock was the tip of a hypodermic needle that had broken off inside.
     The autopsy revealed that Kevin had died from heroine overdose. The next week, the police removed the balls from the ball pit and lo and behold. There was rotten food, several hypodermic needles: some full; some used; knives, half-eaten candy, diapers, feces, and the stench of urine.
     If a child is not safe in a child's play area then where? You can find the article on Kevin Archer in the October 10, 1994 issue of the Houston Chronicle.
     Please forward this to all loving mothers!

Guide's note:  I know from experience that soon after debunking this misbegotten missive I'll start getting emails from people informing me about all sorts of nasty and potentially dangerous objects that really have been found in fast food restaurant play areas, particularly ball pits. So let me say at the outset that yes, that much is true – things like hypodermic needles could end up in a ball pit.

An incident like this could conceivably happen.

But this incident didn't.

So far as we know, Kevin Archer never even existed, let alone died as the result of a "heroine" overdose after playing in a McDonald's ball pit. No such news story ever appeared in the Houston Chronicle (or the "Midrand Chronicle" or the "Midland Chronicle," neither of which exists).

[Bud Helms]

Okay, stoopid question: What is a "ball pit"?

[This message has been edited by sensop (edited April 13, 2000).]

[Sgt.K]

sensop, it's those play areas at McD's and other places that have all of the different colored ball about the size of baseballs that all the kids play in.

Hope that made sense!!! :)

Sgt.K

[Bud Helms]

Oh. I'll be darned.

[Red Bull]

"In your scenario, once it entered the bloodstream, it would immediately solidify(due to immediate cooling) and the user would die from embolism."

Not necessarily by any means, but thanks for the heads up on the rest of the info. I am no goody-two-shoes, but I must admit that I have never even seen heroine in person, nor taken the time to study up on it.



------------------
"Our cause has been aided by the deaths of all these children in all these schools, and in other settings. And I think we should pay tribute to them." - President Bill Clinton, dancing in the blood of children and pushing his irrelevant gun control laws, April 12, 2000, Scripps Howard News Service Interview

[DC]

Neither have I, just a consequence of organic and biochem education :)

------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!