Girl, 5, brings home ecstasy in bag of trick or treat sweets
A MOTHER was horrified to find a suspected bag of ecstasy tablets among her children’s trick or treat sweets.
Amy Dixon has warned other parents to carefully check what their children have been given after her five-year-old daughter came close to swallowing the suspicious pills.
The mother-of-four found a padded envelope containing pink tablets among the sweets her children had collected from neighbours while trick or treating in Shiremoor, North Tyneside.
As she tipped the pills out on to the kitchen counter at home she had to stop excited little Lexi-Mai from grabbing them and putting them in her mouth. Miss Dixon, 34, took the package to police and officers told her they believed the pills to be ecstasy, a dangerous Class A drug.
She said: ‘It’s so lucky I found them when I did. I would urge all parents to check their sweets – if not somebody is going to get seriously hurt.’ Miss Dixon’s partner Mark Richardson took their children Craig 13, Callum, ten, LexiMai and Lucy-Rae, two, trick or treating and the youngsters came back with a huge haul of sweets from neighbours.
Lexi-Mai asked her mother if she could open her bags of sweets straight away and she agreed.
Miss Dixon, a self- employed cleaner, recalled: ‘She ripped them open and there was candy everywhere.’ She went to get her vacuum cleaner and, as she was attempting to tidy up, she spotted a package that stood out among the bags of sweets.
‘I noticed what looked like a Jiffy bag,’ she said. ‘I picked it up and I just thought, “Who puts sweets in a Jiffy bag?” ’
Miss Dixon tipped the contents of the bag on to the kitchen counter to take a closer look and as she did so Lexi-Mai tried to grab what she thought were sweets.
‘I was screaming hysterically at her,’ said Miss Dixon, who then begged her daughter to tell her whether she had eaten anything from the bag. ‘By this time my heart was racing,” she said.
Miss Dixon showed the pills to a neighbour, who said he thought they were ecstasy.
Still dressed in her Halloween skeleton onesie, she drove straight to a police station.
But before getting out the car the worried mother filmed a Facebook live video in a bid to warn other parents. ‘I just wanted to let people know,’ she said.
Miss Dixon handed the pills over to an officer, who showed them to his sergeant. She was told they appeared to be ecstasy.
The pills were put in an evidence bag and Miss Dixon gave officers a list of the streets where her children had been trick or treating.
‘Whether this has been done deliberately or been a mistake I don’t know,’ she added. ‘I didn’t sleep at all that night.’
Northumbria Police are now investigating where the tablets came from and urging anyone who has come across anything similar to get in touch. Officers are awaiting the results from tests being carried out on the pills.