- April 24, 2024
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A Palm Coast man has been found guilty of felony child abuse for adding laxatives to a 14-year-old's medications, according to a news release from the Flagler County Sheriff's Office.
The defendant, Craig Ripple, was sentenced Sept. 8 to serve 14 months in state prison, followed by 36 months of probation.
Flagler County Sheriff’s Office deputies began investigating the case in 2019, when the victim's mother reported that Ripple, 54, had been tampering with her son's medication, sneaking items like homework and books out of the children's bedroom and hiding them and taking other odd actions when no one was around to watch him, including pouring a glass of water onto one of the children's beds.
She showed deputies surveillance footage of those actions.
She said her son had been refusing to take his medication, saying it tasted strange and was making him ill. One night, when giving her son his medication, she found one that looked tampered with. She opened up the capsule to find several small tablets inside it. She identified the tablets as laxatives.
Ripple admitted to detectives that he'd tampered with the boy's medication, taken the children's things and poured water onto one of their beds, saying he'd done so "out of spite" because he felt they had disrespected him, according to his arrest report. He turned over the medications he'd altered. Deputies arrested him.
“This is a very bizarre case, and it takes a sick and twisted individual to administer laxatives to a child without his or his mother’s knowledge,” Sheriff Rick Staly said, according to the news release. “I hope the courts deal harshly with him and that this is a wakeup call that this behavior is dangerous and will not be tolerated. Thankfully the victim was not significantly injured.”
