Meth found amid California child’s Halloween candy

By WTOP Staff
November 4, 2014 | 12:40 AM

HERCULES, Calif. (AP) — Police in Northern California are investigating who gave a plastic bag of methamphetamine to a young girl on Halloween.

Hercules police Sgt. Ezra Tafesse tells the Contra Costa Times (http://bit.ly/1DXpHSR ) the 8-year-old girl’s parents found the powder packaged in a small zip-style bag among the child’s Halloween candy and alerted police Monday.

Tafesse says the girl had been trick-or-treating in the Promenade area of Hercules, a San Francisco Bay Area city, when she was given the bag containing one-tenth of a gram of crystal methamphetamine.

He says it’s not clear if the girl was given the drugs intentionally or accidentally, and police don’t have a suspect.

Tafesse says drugs are slipped into Halloween candy from time to time, but it’s usually marijuana.

School bus emergency? Fairfax County students have a plan to handle it

By Heather Gustafson
August 21, 2026 | 10:05 PM

This story is part of WTOP’s 2026 Back to School coverage. The wheels on the bus will soon be going round and round again in Fairfax County, Virginia, and some of its young riders are learning what to do if there’s an emergency on the way to school. The annual Safety Patrol Training Camp, hosted by Fairfax County Public Schools' Office of Transportation Services, combined hands-on exercises with classroom lessons to teach students how to keep calm during emergencies on buses. The training can feel remarkably realistic, with overturned school buses on their side or completely upside down in the middle of the county bus depot. Other buses, right side up, fill with smoke that is water-based but mimics the intensity of a bus overheating.

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