Cops: Mom Put Bourbon In Her Baby's Bottle

NOVEMBER 6--When her teething infant son would not stop crying, an Arkansas woman called her mother and was told to rub some alcohol on the child’s painful gums.

Instead, cops charge, Lori Sheppard, 28, put bourbon in her 10-month-old son’s bottle, leading to the infant’s hospitalization and her arrest for child endangerment and aggravated assault.

Sheppard’s son Ronald was rushed last week to a hospital emergency room after he was found “limp and unresponsive.”

Sheppard initially told cops that the child “was fine before she placed him in his playpen” inside the family’s trailer home in Mt. Holly, a community about 125 miles south of Little Rock.

Sheppard claimed that when she briefly left the trailer, her five-year-old stepbrother went inside. When she returned to the home, Sheppard said she found Ronald “unconscious and unresponsive.”

During police questioning, Sheppard initially denied giving the baby alcohol (the child’s father told police that there was “a 5th of bourbon in the freezer at the trailer”). But, cops say, she eventually confessed to putting booze in Ronald’s bottle.

Sheppard told investigators that when Tylenol and Motrin did not relieve the infant’s discomfort, she sought advice from her mother, who suggested rubbing alcohol on Ronald’s gums.

The child, who was airlifted to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, had a blood alcohol content of .19, according to a Union County Sheriff’s Office report. After several days of treatment, the boy was discharged into the custody of child welfare workers.

Pictured above in an unfortunate message t-shirt, Sheppard was booked into jail on the felony charges. A judge set her bond at $10,000. (2 pages)