It was summer and I was working midnight shift at the jail (8 pm - 6 am). It was about 10:30 pm and I had just finished passing out meds. We had two female trustees who had been outside working in the garden earlier in the evening and had been working in the laundry room for the last 45 minutes or so. The girls were done working and came up the hallway to meet me to be patted down.
My sergeant came up the hall to talk to the girls because they were acting strangely; they were constantly laughing and walking funny. I asked the first girl, Stacy, to turn around for a pat down; she mumbled something and couldn’t follow directions. My sergeant asked the other girl, Marissa, what had they taken?
She didn’t answer so we immediately separated the girls and I took Stacy to the bathroom in Booking for a drug test. Stacy couldn’t follow my directions for her to pee in the cup; instead, she took the cup and got down on the ground and began rubbing her hands on the tile floor and pretended to put dirt in the cup, while mumbling under her breath. It was obvious she was high on something, but I didn’t know what.
Then, as I stood her up and began walking her to an observation cell, she urinated all over herself. I placed her in a cell and walked over to my sergeant who was still questioning Marissa. Marissa finally admitted that the girls had eaten seeds from the Moonflowers outside in the garden. They had heard from another inmate that you can get high from them. We immediately placed Marissa in another observation cell and went to the control room.
We Googled Moonflowers and found that they can be very toxic, so we called dispatch and had EMS called. I put leg irons and belly chains on both girls and rode in the ambulance with them. Stacy had allegedly eaten four seeds and was in much worse condition than Marissa so she was on the stretcher. My partner, Scotty followed behind the ambulance in a patrol car. During the 18 mile ride to the hospital, Stacy got ill and threw up all over. Vomit was everywhere, including on me. The paramedics tried to get her to throw up in the vomit bag but she was still too high to understand simple directions.
When we arrived at the hospital, the girls were placed in beds next to each other. The doctor checked on them and was also surprised that they had eaten Moonflower seeds. I think the doctor Googled it too because he seemed a bit unsure of how to treat them. And apparently a side effect of the seeds is that it causes frequent urination. So I spent the next six hours at the hospital taking the girls back and forth to the bathroom while my partner Scotty watched the door and ate popcorn with the nurses.
My relief officer arrived around 6 am and I went back to the jail to turn in my gear and go home. When I got back to work we reviewed video of the girls in the laundry room and saw that they had urinated in the washing machine and on the floor in the bathroom. The girls were discharged from the hospital later that morning, were written up for their actions and lost their trustee positions.
The Moonflowers were also removed from the garden the next day. It was definitely a crazy night and these two girls still come to jail occasionally for minor violations. They are definitely in our jail history books and will always be known as the Moonflower Girls.