I keep an eye on the Seattle P-I’s top stories news feed just in case a story like this comes across the wire. It’s a coincidence that this happened just after I visited Bainbridge Island for the first time.

Two 12-year-old girls from Bainbridge Island are accused of attempting to elude punishment for a tardy assignment Thursday by poisoning their teacher, Kasey Jeffers, with a flavored lip balm they knew would make her ill.

Jeffers, 58, is violently allergic to strawberries — common knowledge at Sakai Intermediate School, according to police, who arrested the youths on suspicion of assault after they were accused of coating the rim of their teacher’s coffee cup and water bottle with strawberry lip gloss.

“They had discussed using real strawberries but decided that would be fatal and this would just make her sick enough to leave school, which was what they wanted,” said Mark Duncan, the island’s deputy police chief.
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The teacher is fine, and the girls have been charged with third-degree assault.

For me the best part of the story was not the subject, but the writing. In fact, I emailed the author to thank her for delivering one of the best sentences I had ever read in print,

Though other students raced to warn Jeffers, she had already sipped from one of the tainted vessels.