BATTLEBORO —A woman told that cheese in the refrigerator was off-limits poisoned her adoptive family by dosing the cheese with bleach and ammonia, sheriff’s deputies said.
Nash County deputies on Saturday charged Tiara Danielle Drake, 24, of the 5500 block of Hubbard Drive near Battleboro, with five counts of attempted murder.
Drake poisoned the cheese on Friday after Evelyn Johnson told her she couldn’t have any and told Drake she could eat another kind of cheese instead, according to sheriff’s Sgt. Eddie Moore.
“When they got up the next day and started eating the cheese and it didn’t taste right, it just went from there,” Moore said.
Evelyn, Craig and Darion Johnson and two children who weren’t named in a sheriff’s report made breakfast using the poisoned cheese. Moore said the cheese was tainted with Ajax powder cleanser, window cleaner and detergent.
Bleach in the Ajax and ammonia in the window cleaner could combine to form hydrochloric acid, a corrosive poison that can cause severe mouth, throat and stomach damage and death in high doses.
“Apparently, they didn’t eat enough of it to be a big concern,” Moore said, explaining that the family members did not suffer permanent injuries.
Nash County paramedics and poison control officials told deputies that those who ate the cheese would be OK after drinking plenty of milk.
Moore said Drake had lived with the Johnson family for several years, though she hadn’t formally been adopted.
Deputies booked Drake into the Nash County Jail in Nashville under a $50,000 secured bond.
The home where the alleged poisoning occurred is near the unincorporated community of Battleboro outside Rocky Mount.