MESA, Ariz. — A Mesa mother and grandfather are facing a child abuse charge after the man paid the woman's son to take his drug test that resulted in the boy being hospitalized for a drug overdose.
Police were called to Lindbergh Elementary School on Tuesday where an 11-year-old student was showing signs of a drug overdose.
School staff reportedly told police the boy said on Monday night his grandfather John Todd Davis paid him $40 to take a pill and to urinate in a cup in order for him to pass a drug test.
Davis reportedly did not want to test positive for marijuana at an upcoming doctor's appointment in order for him to continue to receive morphine medication.
The boy told police he took half of a pink pill and a few hours later he began to feel sick. He said he vomited five times that night.
The boy was home with his grandfather, grandmother and mother, identified in court documents as 29-year-old Kiralee Ruck, when he became sick.
The boy's grandmother told Ruck to take him to the emergency room, but she refused, according to court documents.
Court documents allege Ruck let her son go to bed that night without medical attention. The boy woke up and vomited two more times in the morning and Ruck still made him go to school, police say.
While at school the boy was still feeling sick and went to the school nurse. He told school staff his grandfather gave him a morphine pill.
Mesa fire and medical staff determined the boy was experiencing symptoms of an overdose. He tested positive for opioids at the hospital.
When she was interviewed at the hospital Ruck said she gave her son a prescribed Adderall pill before she knew he had taken the morphine pill.
She reportedly told investigators Davis, who was her stepfather, had overdosed multiple times on morphine pills.
Court documents say Ruck admitted to police she knew her son was sick and had thrown up, and also acknowledged that her mother suggested she take him to the hospital and she did not.
And Ruck allegedly knew this wasn't the first time her stepfather had asked her son to urinate in a cup for him. Ruck told police she had known for at least a month her stepfather was paying her son for urine to pass drug tests.
Ruck is facing one count of felony child abuse.