A 7-year-old kid spotted drinking Mike's Hard Lemonade (an alcoholic beverage for those of you who don't know) was taken from his parents and temporarily placed in foster care.
Christopher Ratte, says he asked for a lemonade for his 7-year-old son Leo, and was given a Mike's, a drink he claims he'd never heard of before.
Ratte is a professor of classical archaeology at the University of Michigan (shows you the quality of the education there).
Later, a security guard noticed the kid drinking the booze, and reported the incident.
The kid was taken to the hospital, the father was interviewed by the cops and Leo spent a few days in the custody of Child Protective Services before he was allowed to move home.
I don't believe Ratte's story that he thought it was regular lemonade. $7 for a lemonade is exorbitant even by ballpark standards. Plus it's called hard lemonade. Plus this guy works at a college. Like Vincent Vega once said "he shoulda fuckin better known better." I think Ratte bought the lemonade for himself and allowed the kid to have a sip and hold the bottle. It just so happened that an usher saw them at this point. I think he didn't want to admit this because his ignorance defense does sound believable enough and admitting that you gave your kid alcohol isn't exactly the best thing to say to Child Protective Services. I'm also basing my conclusion on this piece of evidence: when tested 90 minutes later Leo's blood showed no traces of alcohol. Even one bottle of Hard Lemonade or beer would stay in a 7-year-old's system for more than 90 minutes.
Either way I don't think Ratte committed a huge crime here and I think almost everyone who got involved from the usher to the stadium physician (who sent Leo to the ER in an ambulance) to the CPS workers all behaved overzealously. But I guess when you see cases of child abuse everyday , you can never be too careful.
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