SAN ANTONIO – A San Antonio woman who helped her son mix a drink that later sent an elementary school student to the hospital said the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office rushed to charge her with felony injury to a child, even though the child was not injured.
In her first public comments since being arrested in March and then cleared of criminal wrongdoing months later, Jennifer Rossi said Sheriff Javier Salazar needlessly shamed her on social media, causing even more torment for her child at school.
“I feel absolutely betrayed by (Sheriff) Salazar. And it hurts my heart because both of my parents were law enforcement,” Rossi said.
Prime drink replaced with vinegar, lemon juice and salt mixture
On March 4, Rossi’s then 10-year-old son came home from Legacy Traditional School-Alamo Ranch and said a classmate stole his Prime drink off of the playground.
The sports drink was inside a limited edition Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) 300 bottle, according to Rossi.
She said her child decided to replace some of the contents of another bottle of Prime to stop the classmate from stealing the drink in the future.
“My son started to make it himself and I stepped in to make sure that he was not putting anything in there that could hurt anybody,” said Rossi, who confirmed the mixture included apple cider vinegar, lemon juice and a small amount of salt.
Those ingredients are similar to what is found in a holistic detox cleanse.
“I never told my son that he needed to give that to anybody. It was me trying to encourage my son to stand up to a bully in a non-violent way. I never intended to poison anybody. It was just going to teach somebody a lesson if they stole it again,” Rossi said.
Although she believed her son planned to leave the bottle on the playground the following day, she said her son’s friend convinced him to hand it to the classmate.
The boy, whom Rossi referred to as her son’s bully, poured some of the drink into a water bottle, took a large sip, and after it tasted bad, spit it out, Rossi’s affidavit for arrest states.
The child then began to complain of having a headache and nausea, records show.
Although six other classmates who tried the drink were checked and cleared by the school nurse, the first boy was taken to CHRISTUS Santa Rosa – Westover Hills Hospital, charging records show.
‘I didn’t know what I was walking into’
Rossi, a health care professional, said she got a call from administration at her son’s school asking her to come pick him up.
“I went to the school, and as soon as I got there the principal brought me into the conference room where I saw police. I didn’t know what I was walking into,” Rossi said.
She said a BCSO investigator questioned her for hours and informed her that she was being detained.
The affidavit for Rossi’s arrest states that the mixture was made at home by Rossi and that the school’s principal told BCSO Rossi admitted to making the drink and providing it to her son to stop her son from being bullied and having his drink stolen.
Rossi, during her interview with KSAT, disputed that version of events.
She said she was released from being detained at the school only to be arrested at home hours later.
A Facebook post by BCSO on March 6 included a narrative of the incident and Rossi’s mugshot.
It has over 660 comments and has been shared nearly 230 times.
She showed KSAT text messages sent to her son by his classmates, mocking him about his mother’s arrest.
Rossi confirmed she later withdrew her son from school at the end of the semester.
Salazar, in an interview with KSAT recorded days after Rossi’s arrest, said no report of bullying had been made by Rossi or her son and that she had taken the law into her own hands.
“It’s public information that people need to know about. The harm to the community is what we’re trying to prevent by publicizing, so that people know that there are consequences attached to your actions,” Salazar told KSAT in March.
Rossi disputed Salazar’s claim that her son had not reported the bullying and confirmed her son reported the stolen drink to the school’s academic coach.
Bexar County prosecutors in late August rejected the felony case, citing insufficient evidence, court records show.
Rossi’s criminal defense attorney told KSAT the charge would go nowhere because no child was injured, and that the boy’s treatment plan from the hospital called for him to drink water.
The attorney said the next step is to get the charge expunged from Rossi’s record.
Salazar did not respond to multiple requests seeking an interview for this story.
A spokesman for Legacy Traditional Schools referred KSAT’s inquiries on the case to BCSO.
“I absolutely regret that this all happened. And I know as a parent if I were on the other side of things and my child drank a random, strange drink, I can understand the fear of that. But I don’t regret trying to teach my son to stand up to a bully and trying tell him to do it in a non-violent way,” Rossi said.
Read more reporting on the KSAT Investigates page.