An Australian woman has been jailed for encouraging her five-year-old son to drink homemade liquor.
Kylie Eastwood, 36-year-old mother of six, will serve at least eight months in prison for allowing her five-year-old son to down several shots of homemade moonshine after a judge ruled she had failed to stay sober since the incident two years ago.
During the shocking July 2008 incident, the boy’s father confiscated the alcohol when he caught his child drinking it at their home. He later called an ambulance after he found Eastwood rooting the five-year-old on as he consumed more shots in the kitchen.
When authorities arrived, they found the young boy so tipsy that he was ‘making grunting noises’ and walking into walls.
He was hospitalized with a blood alcohol level of 0.09, above the legal limit for adults in most states. Authorities believe he consumed between four to six shots of the potent home-brewed grape brandy, which tests later revealed had a 44 per cent alcohol proof.
‘He likes his alcohol and asked me for a drink, and I told him, “Well OK, just one”,’ said Eastwood in her initial police interview.
‘At the time I didn’t see the severity of it but I tell you what, the next morning I did.’
Kylie Eastwood
Eastwood originally pleaded guilty to reckless conduct endangering serious injury and failing to protect a child from harm and was sentenced to five months in jail, which was suspended for two years.
In April when she got drunk and turned on the gas of an open oven while her eight-month-old son slept in another room, prompting the judge to order her to serve time for the 2008 charges.
The unfit mother was also ordered to serve a four-month suspended sentence for another conviction related to her leaving three children under the age of 10 at home alone for several hours while she went out drinking with a friend.
