A 5-month-old baby is recovering in hospital after being given formula with alcohol in by her mother and grandmother.
The grandmother, Tressie Piggee, 44, from Stockton said she made the baby a bottle of formula with what she thought was water but was actually Bacardi rum on Friday night. The baby girl, Vanessa, was rushed to hospital on Saturday morning, where police arrived and arrested her mother, 26-year-old Iesha Hill.
Piggee said that the incident was an accident caused because she mistook the Bacardi for water as it was in a water bottle. "I was making formula at 2:00 a.m. and didn't know that the plastic bottle next to the baby's formula was filled with Bacardi - and not water,' Piggee explained.
Piggee said that neither she or her daughter could understand why the baby was refusing to drink her formula on Friday night. However when Vanessa’s head started wobbling around 10:00 a.m. the next morning, they knew something was wrong, alleged Piggee. Hill opened the bottle to see if something was wrong with the formula and smelled alcohol.
The infant was rushed to a Stockton hospital where she was quickly transported to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento for treatment. Hospital staff called the police and Hill was arrested on child abuse charges.
Piggee has spoken out to say that she doesn’t think her daughter should have been arrested because the incident was an accident. She described her daughter as a 'good mother' who did her best, adding that 'we all make mistakes.'
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