Two Wyoming parents are under arrest after they allegedly tried to teach their son a lesson about the dangers of binge drinking … and he died.
His stepfather, Joseph M. Richardson, and his mother, Paulette L. Richardson, were arrested and charged with manslaughter in the case.
Kendal Ball, 16, was found dead on early July 7 with a blood-alcohol level of .587 following a night of heavy drinking with both figures.
In Wyoming, the legal limit to drive a vehicle is .08.
According to court documents, the pair "wanted to teach him a lesson," because Kendal recently expressed a desire to start drinking.
Joseph told authorities he "was trying to go along with what he had been told and teach a lesson about alcohol and get him sick."
Paulette also told police that Kendal’s biological father was an alcoholic and she feared her son would become an addict like him.
Kendal’s parents allegedly provided the curious teenager with alcohol and got intoxicated with him and a friend, Joseph Kunkle.
It’s unclear how much the teen drank, but with the highest BAC we have seen or read about in any situation ever … it had to be a lot.
Or did it? The parents tell a (mostly) harmless tale.
Paulette told police he had "a few shots of Fireball and a few shots of Jack Daniel’s" over course of about two hours on July 6.
She did not drink, she says; Kunkle told authorities he only saw Kendal drink a bit of Fireball and some beer, according to police.
The teenager went to bed at 10:30 p.m. His mother said that she checked on him at 11 p.m. and he even gave her a thumbs-up.
But when Joseph went to see if the boy was okay around 3:45 a.m. the next day, he found Kendal unresponsive and called 911.
There was "a large amount of dark, thick fluid pooled on the floor from his mouth," an affidavit filed in the case states of Ball.
Additionally, "there were multiple places that looked like vomit on the floor," while Kendal’s "lips and eyelids were dark blue."
His body was cool to the touch, and an autopsy determined the probable cause of death as "complications of acute alcohol poisoning."
