Everyone who has raised a teenager knows just how sensitive this time is. One day, your son or daughter wants to sit at home on the couch on the weekend and enjoy time with the family, then suddenly they’re rarely home and don’t want to be seen in public with you.
That your child should start drinking or worse, use drugs is one of parents’ worst fears when their children become teenagers.
16-year-old Davis Cripe died April 26 this year, but not because of alcohol nor drugs. What killed him was a completely legal substance that most young people use, according to CNN.
Davis was like any teenager: he attended high school, worked part-time at a sports store, liked music and often made the people around him laugh.
He was against both alcohol and drugs, but he’d never perceived coffee, soda or energy drinks as being potentially harmful to him.
On April 26th, Davis had a coffee at 12.30 pm. He later drank a Mountain Dew (a 12 oz can of Mountain Dew contains 54 mg of caffeine). Not long after, he had an energy drink.
At 2:28 pm, Davis collapsed in his classroom. An ambulance rushed to the school and Davis was taken to Palmetto Health Baptist Parkridge Hospital. At 3:30 pm, he was declared dead.
How could a healthy teenager like Davis, who used neither alcohol nor drugs, collapse and die in the middle of the day? The answer is as stunning as it is disturbing: he’d consumed three drinks with high caffeine content in less than two hours.
The teen died due to a “caffeine-induced cardiac event,” coroner Dr. Gary Watts told ABC News.
Davis suffered a cardiac arrest due to the large amount of caffeine in his body. It’s important to note however that caffeine is not dangerous in moderate amounts, but can be dangerous if too much is consumed in a short period of time.
“Davis, like so many other children and others, did something he thought was totally harmless; consumed large amounts of caffeine. We lost Davis because of a completely legal substance,” the coroner added.
Now, Davis’ father, Sean Cripe, is appealing to other parents to have a proper talk with their children about how dangerous caffeine can be if consumed in large amounts.
Although it is a relatively unusual cause of death, it’s completely unnecessary and should never happen again.
Watch the below report on the incident for more:
Please share Davis’ tragic story with your family and friends to warn them about overconsuming caffeine! You never know – your share could save a life.
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