So… this happened, and I’m speechless:
A woman accused of stabbing her 6-year-old daughter to death with scissors told police she had been taking a weight-loss product, had trouble sleeping for several days and felt an “evil” presence before the attack. “Did I kill my daughter? Is she dead?'” Danielle Yvonne Slaughter asked police after police found her on Sunday, naked, bloody and running barefoot through Las Vegas, according to court documents released Tuesday.
The frenzied 27-year-old woman was hospitalized after she told police that the blood on her hands was from the “lamb of God.” Police later found Kyla Franks dead at their home.
“There was no rhyme or reason to it,” homicide Lt. Ray Steiber said of the girl’s death. “I don’t think there’s anything that anyone could have anticipated.”
In a recorded police interview early Monday, Slaughter told investigators she had trouble sleeping since she started taking the weight-loss product Hydroxycut four days earlier, and that she had been feeling “an evil presence” for several days. She said she slept just one hour Saturday night.
Steiber said police believe the mother was sleep-deprived and may have been affected by the weight-loss product she had been taking.
It was not immediately known whether federal officials have received complaints linking Hydroxycut to confusion or delusions. A U.S. Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman, Siobhan DeLancey, said the product was recalled in 2009 due to complaints about liver damage.
The product was later reformulated and returned to the market by parent company Iovate Health Services Inc. of Canada and Iovate Health Sciences USA Inc. of Blasdell, N.Y., the FDA spokeswoman said.
Company officials did not immediately respond Tuesday to messages.
The police report said Slaughter told them “she never felt this way before,” and that she said she wanted to remove the evil from the house.
Slaughter told police she and her daughter were sitting on the bed when the girl spoke in “evil words,” laughed “in an evil voice” and clawed and kicked at her. The mother said she picked up scissors and struck the child several times.
Slaughter remains held at the Clark County jail pending an initial court appearance Wednesday on a murder charge. It wasn’t immediately clear if she had a lawyer.[source]
I find this creepy and unfortunate… and it feels like the wrong opportunity to prove a point, but it must be reiterated:
On to fat burners and thermogenics. This stuff is gross. It is so gross.
It’s lightly regulated – all that has to be proven is that the stuff will not kill you – and you rarely have any idea what’s in it. If fat burners were ever researched by the purchasing public, you’d find that they, more often than not, have the most nebulous ingredient lists you’ve ever heard of in your life.
Do people experience weight loss on fat burners? Of course. Do people take fat burners forever? Do they eventually go off of the pill and experience weight gain? Do people ever realize that they’re just taking glorified caffeine pills? That’s all that most “fat burners” really are. That is… if the manufacturer even knows what’s in the pill they manufactured.
Excerpted from Q&A Wednesday: Protein Powders, Fat Burners and Supplements… Oh My! | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss
Someone who goes four days without sleep will, without question, start to experience the side effects of sleep deprivation. If you feel desperate enough to lose weight, to the point where you jokingly say to someone (or yourself) “Sh-t, let me take all these pills, with my fat -ss,” or even “Maybe if I take twice the pills, I’ll lose weight twice as fast!” then you run the risk of doubling – or even quadrupling – your exposure to caffeine. If you couldn’t imagine taking four cups of coffee back to back, then imagine going hard on ultracaffeinated pills.
It’s also important to note that Hydroxycut, the pill she was taking, was recalled years ago. However, this doesn’t mean it was/could be pulled from the market.
All in all.. senseless and unfortunate.