Girl Gave Classmates Cookies Baked With Dead Grandfather’s Ashes, Authorities Say

Authorities said Tuesday a California high school student allegedly gave her classmates sugar cookies baked with her grandfather’s ashes.

They added some students were aware the cookies contained human remains before they ate them.

Davis Police Lt. Paul Doroshov said a female student of Da Vinci Charter Academy, a public charter high school, brought the cookies to school on Oct. 4. She distributed them to at least nine other students and some of those who ate the cookies, without knowing what the "extra ingredient" in it was, were horrified later on.

“Some students knew beforehand and still consumed the cookies,” Doroshov said adding the allegations were credible.

Doroshov said a school resource officer told him that two female students were involved in bringing the cookies to school. The relationship between the two is unclear, but the two were not siblings, and the deceased man whose ashes were mixed in the cookie was the grandfather of only one of them, Doroshov said.

“This is a weird one,” he said about the case. “I have not heard of anyone getting sick or anybody being harmed as far as physically, physiologically by this.”

He added police opened a case regarding the incident and were trying to determine which penal code would be applicable in an incident where human remains are baked into food, a report in LA Times said. The officers were considering a California penal code section about the improper disposal of human remains, but Doroshov said public-nuisance charges might be more appropriate.

Authorities are working with the school to figure out how to best proceed with the investigation, and the students are cooperating, Doroshov said.

“Today Da Vinci Charter Academy High School and Davis Joint Unified are receiving a great deal of media attention. Our communications team is supporting our staff with this effort, but I want you to know that my first priority is to the safety and well-being of our students,” Da Vinci Charter Academy principal Tyler Millsap said in a letter to parents. “We care about our students and we care about our students’ families. We always take all allegations of wrongdoing seriously and we conduct thorough investigations and involve the police or other entities when appropriate. … In this case and all cases, we work with all parties involved, including our student’s families.”

“I can say that those who were involved are remorseful and this is now a personal family matter and we want to respect the privacy of the families involved,” he added.

A student, Andy Knox, told KCRA, an NBC-affiliated television station, he was about to go into his environmental science class when a girl from the same class offered him a cookie.

“She told me there's a special ingredient in the cookie … I thought that she put drugs in it or something. So I asked her if like, ‘Is this a weed cookie or something?’ And she said ‘No.’ She said it was her grandpa's ashes. And then she kind of laughed. And I was really, I was kind of horrified,” the student said.

“I didn’t believe her until she pulled out the urn,” he said adding the cookie didn’t taste unusual, but “if you ever ate sand as a kid, you know, you can kind of feel it crunching in between your teeth. So, there was a little tiny bit of that.”

According to Knox, the cookie contained “tiny gray flecks.”