Inset: Utah student Flor Perry with her parents, Devin and Kim Perry. Background: The Utah school where Flor Perry allegedly drank from a teacher's tumbler that had hard seltzer in it (KSL/YouTube).
A Utah student who is developmentally delayed drank from her teacher's "stainless steel tumbler" mug, which had hard seltzer in it that the educator was secretly sipping on in class, according to cops and the child's parents.
The student, Flor Perry, wound up falling down at her Farmington school and hitting her head after sipping from the tumbler, which allegedly belonged to Katherine Meatoga, the girl's parents say. "There was no way of telling how much she consumed," Flor's mother, Kim Perry, explained during an interview with local NBC affiliate KSL.
"She's developmentally delayed, the age of a 2-year-old," Perry said about Flor, who is biologically 21 years old and has a rare genetic disease called 1p36 deletion syndrome, which has led to her being nonverbal.
"We were told that her teacher had been inebriated at school," Perry said.
Kim and Devin Perry have already had to go through an alleged case of abuse that Flor experienced in 2022 at the hands of another teacher at a different school, according to the couple. Now, they say, they're forced to deal with a similar situation.
"Here we go again," Devin Perry exclaimed. "This happened twice to our daughter. How many more incidents are going on that are not being reported on and divulged to parents?"
Meatoga was arrested and charged with possession or consumption of an alcoholic beverage at school, a class B misdemeanor, in connection with the March 18 hard seltzer incident, KSL reports.
Meatoga was employed by the Vista Education Center in the Davis School District at the time. The district says she has since resigned. A district spokesperson confirmed to KSL that Meatoga was drinking "hard seltzer in a stainless steel tumbler" when Flor "took possession of the employee's mug" and drank from it.
"The Davis School District and our community have high expectations for educators," the spokesperson said. "Unfortunately, in this circumstance, an employee violated that trust. We do not tolerate the possession or consumption of alcohol on school premises."
The district did not respond to Law&Crime's requests for comment Monday.
Flor's parents say she was adopted from Ecuador when she was 7 after Kim Perry met her while working at an orphanage when Flor was a baby.
"I just fell in love with her," Kim Perry told KSL. "She had a sweet personality back then."
Flor's parents say that while she knows 20 different hand signs that she uses to communicate, it was impossible for the Perrys to know what had happened without being told by local officials.
"The district said they didn't tell us because they didn't have a witness report until several days later," Devin Perry said. "These are vulnerable, nonverbal students who can't come home and say, 'Hey, something weird happened at school today.' We're trusting that the district is taking care of them and being open with us about things that occur."
Meatoga is due to appear in court on May 5.
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