A central Florida mother says her toddler got a little tipsy after accidently being served alcohol at a popular chain restaurant.
Jill Van Heest took her two and half year old son Nikolai to dinner at the Olive Garden on Highway 98 in Lakeland on March 31st.
The boy ordered orange juice and his mom says he drank most of what was in his child's plastic cup when a waiter came to the table. "We're eating our meals when the waiter came over and said there's been a mistake, I need to get you a new one and took the glass and kind of scurried away," Van Heest said.
She asked him what was in the cup and was told Tropical Sangria, a mixed drink of orange juice, pineapple juice and white wine.
Van Heest spoke to the restaurant manager. "He was very sympathetic, very apologetic, but no real explanation as to how it happened, just that it was a mistake," she said.
The mother says Niko was acting strangely and misbehaving throughout the dinner. "He was visibly drunk. His eyes were dilated, they were red. He was now getting loud."
She decided to take him to the Emergency Room and Lakeland Regional Medical Center to get checked out. Doctors there told her they couldn't immediately determine how much alcohol was in the boy's system. The gave him an I.V. of fluids and released him after a couple hours. Van Heest doesn't believe there will be any long term health affects and her son appears back to normal.
A spokesperson for Olive Garden, Rich Jeffers, gave FOX 35 News this statement about the incident:
"We take the responsibility that comes with serving alcohol seriously. This was an extremely regrettable accident caused by the failure of an employee to follow our strict operating procedures.
We take this situation very seriously, and we are especially grateful that the child involved was not seriously harmed. We have absolutely no tolerance for failure to follow our operating procedures and we took swift, appropriate action to deal with this situation. We are also taking immediate steps to reinforce our standards.
We offer our sincerest apologies to the family of the child, and to all of our guests, whose trust we work so hard to earn. We recognize that trust has been jeopardized by this isolated event, and we are focused on ensuring our guests experience the high standards of service that they've come to expect from us."
Van Heest has contacted an attorney and requested Niko's medical records to determine the exact level of alcohol that was in her son's system. She hopes the restaurant will make changes so a similar accident doesn't happen again.