A 20-year-old Oklahoma college student had convulsions and was hospitalized in Cancún after she and her friend both became ill after consuming what they believe were spiked drinks at a resort in the Caribbean coast city.
Zara Hull and Kaylie Pitzer, both of whom are students at Oklahoma Christian University, traveled to Cancún last Thursday with their boyfriends and another couple, according to Oklahoma’s News 9.
On Friday, the two women “headed to their resort’s pool, had a few drinks, but can’t remember much else after they were served waters,” reporter Sylvia Corkill said in a television news report.
News 9 didn’t identify the resort or say whether Hull and Pitzer consumed alcoholic or non-alcoholic drinks at the resort’s pool bar. A Facebook post by Pitzer’s aunt indicates that were staying at Planet Hollywood Cancún.
“Whoever did this or was involved needs to be brought to justice!!! Praying Planet Hollywood Cancún has record of who the server was that day and deals with them accordingly!!!” wrote Stephanie Pitzer.
Planet Hollywood Cancún didn’t immediately respond to Mexico News Daily’s request for comment.
Hull, speaking from a hospital in Dallas to which she was medevacked after spending time in a Cancún hospital, said the water she was served at the resort’s pool bar “was fizzing and after we drank our water we both [were] knocked out.”
Both Hull and Pitzer were reportedly taken to their rooms in wheelchairs after losing consciousness for an unspecified period of time.
“I started having convulsions in my stomach. I was shaking really bad and couldn’t snap out of it so they called 911,” Hull said.
News 9 reported that Hull and Pitzer were told by doctors in the U.S. that “they believe their drinks may have been spiked with synthetic fentanyl.”
According to a GoFundMe page set up to raise money to get Hull back to the United States, Hull was taken to an unnamed hospital in Cancún by ambulance last Friday afternoon after she started having seizures.
“Upon arriving at the hospital there was a [US] $10,000 deposit required for treatment to start. Over the next few hours her seizures continued. A CT was done and showed no cause. She was placed in ICU,” the page says.
An update posted to the page on Monday night says that Hull was moved out of ICU in the hospital in Dallas and was “spending time in the neurology unit while her body continues to detox from being over medicated in the Mexican hospital.”
According to News 9, Hull’s family “says they were forced to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for unknown medical treatment and medical evacuation to the U.S.”
Pitzer told News 9 she is certain that she and Hull were drugged.
“There is no other explanation for this. Two girls don’t just drop at the same time,” she said.
Pitzer said her “last memory” before blacking out was “walking in the pool.”
“We were out. We couldn’t talk, we couldn’t walk, we couldn’t do anything,” she said.
Similar cases at Cancún resorts have been reported previously, including by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2017.
‘They were pumping her full of so many drugs to keep her sedated’
Stephanie Snider, the mother of Hull’s boyfriend Jake Snider, also asserted that Hull and Pitzer were drugged.
“Zara, along with her friend, Kaylie, were given a drug while they were at the resort in Cancún this past Friday. It was in their drinks. Both girls passed out at the exact same time,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
Snider also asserted that the Cancún hospital where Hull was taken “was NOT treating her.”
“They were pumping her full of so many drugs to keep her sedated. They intubated her and told Jake it was ‘sedation’ for the MRI. There was no reason to sedate her, let alone intubate her. We knew we needed to get her out and back to the U.S.,” she wrote.
Mexico News Daily has been unable to determine the Cancún hospital at which Hull was treated. Neither Snider or Hull immediately responded to our inquiries.
In another Facebook post on Tuesday, Snider said that Hull’s condition had improved.
“Her speech is almost back to normal, just a little slower at times when she starts to get tired. She’s remembering more things that happened before their trip to Mexico, yet still no memory of what happened since she had that drink at the resort,” she wrote.
“… She is still having convulsions although they are spacing further apart. … They are having difficulty trying to figure out what is causing the convulsions other than just still a reaction to all the heavy duty drugs that were put into her while in Mexico. It’s unbelievable the impact all of this has had on her little body,” Snider said.
With reports from News 9
