The substitute teacher gets ill after drinking window cleaner-tainted water but later returns to work.
By STEPHEN HEGARTY and CHASE SQUIRES
Published October 6, 2004
ZEPHYRHILLS - What might have started as a prank sent a Zephyrhills High School student to a juvenile detention center Monday, accused of putting window cleaner in a teacher's water bottle.
The teacher drank some of the liquid during school Friday and became ill for several hours.
After an investigation Monday, Blake Ryan Agar, 17, was charged with "poisoning food or water," a first-degree felony. He has been suspended from school. Zephyrhills High School principal Jim Davis said Tuesday he has not yet spoken with the student and hadn't decided whether to seek expulsion.
During a court hearing Tuesday, Agar's mother said she was not convinced her son was involved. If he was, she said, it may have been a joke.
"He's always been a practical joker," Beverly Agar said.
"He's a pretty good kid," Mrs. Agar said after the court hearing, in which her son stood with his wrists handcuffed. "He's a typical teenager."
The incident happened Friday in a 3-dimension art class. The substitute teacher, who regularly works at the school, became ill after drinking from her water bottle. Zephyrhills police Chief Russell Barnes said the bottle had a blue tint, so it would have been difficult to detect discolored water.
School resource officer Joe Rinaldo got word that the teen told other students that he had put some window cleaner in the teacher's water. The investigation on Monday led to an interview with Agar.
"Apparently he said he didn't have anything against the teacher, that he wasn't trying to hurt her," Barnes said. "He said it was just meant as a joke."
Mrs. Agar said her son, a junior at Zephyrhills High School, has had some difficulties with the teacher involved. But she said he hadn't made any threats.
At the advisory hearing Tuesday, Circuit Judge Linda Babb ordered Agar held in a Pasco County detention facility for juveniles. She appointed a public defender to represent him.
The judge said that because of the elimination of state funding for a program to allow juveniles to return home with supervision, Agar would have to be locked up.
Agar shuffled into the small conference room shortly before 2 p.m. He was clad in a detention center blue uniform, and his handcuffed wrists were shackled to a chain around his waist. As he moved down a hallway, his mother slid over and kissed him on the cheek before being warned by a bailiff to stay back.
Before Judge Babb ordered Agar held in custody, public defender Dillon Vizcarra spoke on the teen's behalf. He asked Babb to consider that Agar has a clean record and that there may be some legal issues to resolve.
"I'm not sure this window cleaner actually constitutes a poison," Vizcarra said.
The law Agar was charged under, however, includes a broad description of poison.
"Whoever introduces, adds, or mingles any poison, bacterium, radioactive material, virus, or chemical compound with food, drink, medicine, or any product designed to be ingested, consumed . . . commits a felony of the first degree," the law states.
Davis said the teacher, who experienced nausea for about six hours after drinking the liquid, has recovered. She has already returned to the school to teach, he said.
