🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
A three-year-old child was rushed to hospital in Monroeville, Pennsylvania after a restaurant accidentally gave her alcohol instead of lemonade.
Mom Ashley Cain was dining at Saga Hibachi Steakhouse on Monday with her daughter Marley and family.
As is custom with hibachi restaurants, the chef performed for the table, squirting sake into the mouths of customers. For children, pink lemonade is instead used, but a mistake led to sake being repeatedly squirted into the three-year-old's mouth.
"There was a bottle of pink lemonade and one bottle of sake. They both look similar. They were both in a condiment squirt bottle. After the first two or three times, she started getting a disgusted look on her face, and were like, something is not right," Cain told Channel 11.
"Ten to 15 minutes later she had really, really bad diarrhea. She started acting woozy, and babbling about I don't know what. You could definitely tell she was off."
Toddlers are unable to process alcohol in the same way as an adult and ingesting alcohol can affect the child's blood sugar and central nervous system, causing dangerous symptoms.
"Symptoms can include confusion, vomiting, and seizures. The child may have trouble breathing and flushed or pale skin. Alcohol reduces the gag reflex. This can cause choking. Alcohol may also cause low blood sugar in children. This can result in a coma from the alcohol or the low sugar," reports Fairview Health Services.
Fairview recommends that caregivers phone the National Poison Control Center or 911 if a child accidentally consumes alcohol.
Cain took Marley to UPMC East, but moved onto Children's Hospital after facing a long wait. Marley received an IV drip in her arm "that was the size of the palm of her hand, which was really sad," said Cain. "It made me cringe just seeing that."
She said the alcohol in her daughter's system was undetectable due to the amount of time passed.
Channel 11 spoke to the restaurant manager, who admitted that the incident occurred and assured they are taking precautions to avoid this from happening again.
"When it happened, he grabbed the wrong bottle, and gave it to the kids. It is our fault. It's horrifying. We are truly sorry this happened. We will go step-by-step to make sure this will never happen again," manager David Wang said.
The chef has been suspended from work.
Saga Hibachi Steakhouse was not immediately available for comment.
