Pot at N.C. day care leads to arrest

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Dec. 15 (UPI) -- A North Carolina woman was charged with misdemeanor child abuse after her 3-year-old son showed up at a day-care center with marijuana, authorities said.

Police said the child thought the marijuana, packaged in small portions, was candy and offered it to his fellow preschoolers to eat, The Charlotte Observer reported Wednesday.

A teacher at the day-care center confiscated the marijuana before any of the children could eat it, the newspaper said.

Lakesha Marie Mials of Raleigh told a Wake County magistrate she had no idea where her son found the two plastic bags of marijuana he had in his pocket and backpack when he arrived at day care center.

"I don't smoke drugs. I don't sell drugs. I don't receive drugs," Mials told Magistrate S.A. Tibbetts.

The backpack did not belong to her son and the child may have found the marijuana outside her home, she said.

Tibbetts ordered Mials to have no contact with the child, pending a review by the Wake County Department of Social Services.

The 3-year-old is in the custody of a grandparent.