E-Paper
Children find suspected mushroom gummies outside San Diego home while Halloween trick-or-treating; probe underway
Two fathers were shocked when their children collected what appeared to be candy from a porch, only to find out that they were psilocybin mushroom gummies.
Prefer HTon Google
Two fathers were in for a shock when their children collected what appeared to be candy from a porch in Ocean Beach while Halloween trick-or-treating, only to find out that they were psilocybin mushroom gummies. The San Diego Police Department is now investigating the incident.
It remains unclear who left the gummies outside the home, and whether they really contained illegal drugs.
Frank Cary and Cameron Hunter made the discovery while trick-or-treating with their children and other neighborhood families Saturday night, October 31. The parents said that they were walking just a few yards behind their kids when the children went to a porch with a bowl of what looked like candy. Cary said his two-year-old child grabbed a package before he noticed something unusual about it.
Also Read | Luca Hanlon remembered by friends as 19-year-old CU Boulder student killed by Omar Perez on Halloween night
"My 2-year-old went up and grabbed one and started walking away with it in his hand,” Cary told NBC 7. “I noticed the picture had a giraffe and words that looked like they were melting. I took it out of his hand and saw that there was a dosage on the front of it. Five grams, [then I ] flipped it around and read 'psilocybin mushrooms.'”
The parents then checked the rest of their children's trick-or-treat bags. They then returned to the house, outside of which the bowl was still sitting. They confronted a woman at the home about the gummies, and Hunter recorded part of the encounter.
What the homeowner said
The homeowner, Shawn Barger, denied that the bowl or gummies belonged to his household, NBC 7 reported. He added that the packages were too expensive for him to have bought to leave outside.
"I looked it up and they're like 20 bucks a piece. It's probably like $300 worth of gummies. I don't have $300 to, like, spend to make myself look bad, you know what I mean. It's ridiculous," Barger said.
Barger also claimed that the house typically does not receive visitors because of its reputation.
"I don't know, everyone thinks it's like the witch house or the dead house or the scary house or something," he said.
Also Read | Omar Perez, suspect in deadly Halloween shooting near CU Boulder, arrested
Investigators have yet to confirm what the gummies contain. Lt. Cesar Jimenez said that testing will be necessary before determining whether a crime was committed, or whether anyone could face charges.
"Looking back in retrospect, of course I wouldn't stop at that house, but they had a bucket of candy," Hunter said.
"For us, we live in a very diverse community and seeing a bowl of what looked like candy out there, one would assume it was open for kids to trick-or-treat at," said Cary.
An investigation is underway.
