A warning from a grieving South Carolina father this morning of the dangers of caffeine.
Officials have linked the substance to the death of his teenage son.
16-year-old Davis Cripe collapsed in his high school last month and died in an emergency room. Further testing revealed it to be a caffeine-induced cardiac event.
The county coroner says the teen drank a large Mountain Dew, a café latte and an energy drink in the two hours before his death.
“We lost Davis from a totally legal substance, that any one of you can walk out of here today and stop at any store and get any one of those things,” said Gary Watts, the Richland County, South Carolina Coroner.
His father joined Watts at the news conference and urged other parents and teens to make better choices. They say Davis never did drugs or alcohol, but did not think using that much caffeine could also be dangerous.