Grandmotherly Love...

Grandmother accused of giving granddaughter gin

"Friday night was Joe Ann DeLoach's 47th birthday. But it was also her night to baby-sit her 8-year-old grand daughter.

So instead of staying home with the girl at the Bloomington apartment where they live, police say DeLoach devised a plan that would allow her to leave the girl home and go out.

"As she had said, she went out to 'celebrate her birthday and to get her drink on,'" said Bloomington Police Commander Jim Ryan.

DeLoach did that, say police, after she forced her granddaughter to do the same, hoping the girl would pass out so she could leave. Police say DeLoach made the third grader drink two glasses of gin, diluting them with water when the girl complained of the taste.

"The child is watching cartoons and the Grandma is feeding her glasses of gin to drink to the point where she then passed out," Ryan said.

But not before she vomited, hit her head on the kitchen table, and struck the left side of her face.

Nine hours after the girl's first drink police say her blood alcohol level was still at .04, half the legal driving limit. DeLoach denies she gave the girl booze, claiming her granddaughter must have snuck the liquor herself.

"There's no way she would have reached that high level just by taking a couple of sips out of the bottle," Ryan said.

Police say the bottle of gin was empty when they arrived at 10 p.m. Friday, alerted by an anonymous caller. By that time, the girl's mother was home from a 12 hour shift, but DeLoach didn't come back until Saturday morning.

"A lot of things could have happened that would have harmed her even more severely, and there was nobody there to provide care for her," Ryan said.

DeLoach is charged with child endangerment, and made her first court appearance Thursday afternoon.

Police still aren't sure how long her granddaughter was passed out, or whether DeLoach may have given her alcohol before.

But they say child protection is investigating, the girl's mother is cooperating, and the child is doing fine."

Wow. And here Obama thought that HE had a bad grandma.