Dinner lady spared jail for giving children space cakes

A dinner lady has been spared jail after she
gave children biscuits laced with cannabis.
Lesley Collins met the two boys and two girls, aged 13 and 12, at the Corporation Arms, Grimsby.


They had gone into the pub to use the
bathroom when they met Collins who told
them ‘I’m your nanna’.

Prosecutor Jeremy Evans told the court: ‘She kept telling the group that she
was a dinner lady and a grandmother.’

She then gave them the space cakes and they left but one of the girls returned to find out what was in them because she felt dizzy and sick.

Mr Evans added: ‘She ate a small mouthful
before throwing it away, she was sick and was left with a shaky feeling.’

A remorseful Collins told police: ‘It’s
despicable. I didn’t know I had done it. I was drunk.’

Nick Worsley, mitigating, said Collins acted
‘utterly out of character’ and had no previous convictions.

She had suffered mental health and depression problems and turned to
self-medicating with cannabis.

At the time, Collins, from Cleethorpes, had taken prescription drugs, alcohol and weed. She was given a six-month suspended prison sentence at Grimsby Crown Court.

Mr Worsley added: ‘She did not know what was going on that evening.

‘She accepts she supplied these hash cakes,
these biscuits that ended up in the hands of
the children.’
He added: ‘She had drunk four pints, the
combination of prescription drugs and alcohol and, perhaps, cannabis has caused her to behave in this utterly abnormal way.

‘They were passed on to these children. She
could not believe it was something she would do.

Judge David Tremberg told Collins: ‘This was seriously irresponsible and abnormal
behaviour, if you had not been so intoxicated, you would not have dreamed of doing this.

‘Mercifully, none of them were seriously
harmed. You cannot possibly have known what effect giving children of this age cannabis biscuits might have had on them.’