When you say goodbye, you treat. So 29-year-old Mariska W. from Vlissingen baked a cake for her ex-colleagues. Not an ordinary cake, but a brownie mixed with cannabis. Two of the five diners were completely disappointed with the space cake. “A bad joke that got out of hand,” the police judge ruled.
It was never her intention that ex-colleagues would become ill, W. assured on Monday morning in the court in Middelburg. As a breakfast cook, she always got along well with colleagues at a hotel on the Veerse Meer in Zeeland. On February 8 of this year, the departed W. returned one last time to deliver a treat. “We had talked about space cake before, so I came up with the idea of making one now,” she told the judge.
W. left the brownie uncut in the hotel kitchen and told four colleagues that they could only eat it after work. “Because you are not allowed to consume drugs during working hours,” W knew. Not to mention possible side effects. “Some people go well with it, others don’t,” said W., who smoked joints himself for years.
Two diners became quite ill from the cake. A cook became tired, could no longer concentrate and had to vomit. He was found by a night porter who saw him lying in his own vomit. The man was no longer able to go home and was forced to spend the night in a hotel room. Another female colleague who ate a large piece of the brownie initially continued working, but also felt nauseous. She slept very poorly for quite some time afterwards. Both went to the police to report W.
Abuse
The public prosecutor found that W. was guilty of assault because by serving the cake she had “knowingly accepted the chance that people would eat it and become ill”. According to the officer, W. was to blame for not having left a note with a warning on the cake. She demanded 60 hours of community service and payment of compensation (276.14 euros) to her female ex-colleague.
The police judge called it “a shame” that W. was the only suspect charged. “Because my impression is that several colleagues have challenged your female ex-colleague to eat the cake,” said the judge. She spoke of a bad joke, in which W. had not taken the possible consequences into account.
Partly because of W.’s clean criminal record, W. got away with a conditional fine of 750 euros. However, she must pay compensation to her female ex-colleague. “Let this be a lesson to others not to treat themselves to space cake,” the judge said.
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