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The Guy in Charge of North Las Vegas' Water Purity Once Poisoned a Bunch of Kids

This surpasses "cartoonish evil" and enters into the realm of "Shakespearian irony."

Image via Flickr user Michael Dorausch

On Tuesday, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that Jerome Breland, North Las Vegas' current interim utilities operations manager, poisoned members of his son's football team in 2000. The paper states that, according to a police report:

Breland told police he was tired of seeing his child get picked on, so he mixed ipecac into a bottle of juice, then gave it to his son for practice with explicit instructions not to drink it and to remain silent when other children did, according to a police report. Ipecac is an over-the-counter medicine that causes vomiting and was once used in the emergency treatment of certain kinds of poisoning.

The boy told police he repeatedly warned his teammates not to drink from the bottle, but that only exacerbated the problem by causing more children to drink from it, according to the report.

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That, in and of itself, is a cartoonishly evil deed. The situation takes on an air of Shakespearian irony once you realize that, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal points out, the North Las Vegas interim utilities operations manager is the person in charge of ensuring the city's water remains pure.

The paper explains that the city's Department of Environmental Protection received a complaint about Breland which in part stated:

People convicted of child molestation should not run day cares—people convicted of theft should not work at banks—people convicted of poisoning defenseless children's water supply should not work for a water department or be in charge of water quality with access to chemicals that could be used to injure or do worse.

As of now, Breland remains in his position, although that may change very soon.

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