Business & Tech

Kids Rushed to Hospital After Drinking Fruit Punch Spiked with Booze at Home Run Inn

One parent said "the punch smelled funny" but they drank it.

Children were mistakenly served fruit punch spiked with alcohol during a birthday party at Home Run Inn in Chicago late Tuesday night, prompting ambulances to rush 13 children to a hospital.

Parents realized the "punch that smelled funny" was full of alcohol after servers ran to their table and grabbed the cups away from the children, says Neyante Eggleston, in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times.

“They just came and swooped all the cups up, so we like 'OK, what’s going on?’ So as they’re swooping cups up, one of the parents of the kids got a whiff of the cup, and it was alcohol," Eggleston said.

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The children ranged in age from 3 months to 13 years old, and 13 of them told their parents they drank from the cups, the Sun-Times reports. But at the hospital, only one child actually had alcohol in her system, police said.

"They never said 'We served them alcohol,'" Eggleston said. "The supervisor, she was not nice."

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The Home Run Inn is at 4254 W. 31st St., in Little Village.

“We are aware of a situation at our 31st Street restaurant on Tuesday, April 8th,” Home Run Inn president Daniel Costello told CBS Chicago. “We are currently working with staff to conduct an internal investigation to discern the facts of what occurred.”

What do you think? Did someone overreact in summoning ambulances for kids who downed juiced-up fruit punch intended for adults?


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