'You put people's lives in danger.' Mom worries kids sickened by candy were targeted

ATLANTA — For the first time, we’re hearing from a parent of one of the 28 kids who got sick and were sent to the hospital after eating Valentines Day treats at school Thursday.

Officials at Sandtown Middle School said the students reported feeling nauseated and disoriented after eating the snacks.

The parent, who asked not to be identified, told Channel 2's Matt Johnson that she has a lot of questions about how this happened and hopes it was an accident.

She did tell Johnson that she was concerned whatever happened may have been done on purpose.

[PHOTOS: 20+ children sickened at Sandtown Middle School]

“One young lady was just screaming,” the mother said.

She told Johnson that she rushed to the school to get her daughter and when she got to the campus, she saw children hallucinating.

“Another young lady was screaming the colors were coming to get her, help, help,” the mother said.

She said her 12-year-old daughter was one of the 28 students who got sick after they ate Valentine’s Day candy and snacks.

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“She was telling me she was very cold even though the school was warm. She was real cold, her teeth were cold. Her stomach hurt, her head hurt, and her eyes were just cloudy,” the mother said.

Her seventh-grader told her she ate a prepackaged lollipop that a friend gave her before lunch.

“She already knows don’t eat anything that’s prepared from home. She knows that, so I was shocked when she was telling me it was something that was prepared,” the mother said.

Other students told Channel 2 Action News on Thursday that classmates got sick after eating a combination of candy and snacks like rice crispy treats and brownies.

The mother said her daughter spent most of Thursday at a hospital. Doctors told her preliminary tests came back negative for drugs.

“Negative for, you know, heroin, cocaine, weed, negative for everything. They were probably thinking something synthetic that it probably can’t test for," the mother said.

Fulton County Schools said food samples will be tested by outside agencies.

The mother still has a lot of questions and suspects the candy may have changed hands before her daughter ate it.

“If it was done intentionally, I hope to find out where it came from,” the mother said. “You put people’s lives in danger -- children at that.”

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said Friday it had not receive any evidence related to Sandtown Middle School so it could be tested.

The principal at the school said they are planning to educate students on dangers of eating foods from unknown sources.

Cox Media Group