13-year-old arrested for giving sleeping pills to classmates, two hospitalized

(CBS) PHILADELPHIA - Police say a 13-year-old girl has been arrested for allegedly distributing a sleeping pill to classmates.

CBS Philly reports that according to authorities, just after 9 a.m. Thursday, seven 7th-grade students were transported to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children after starting to feel ill. 

"My daughter is in there sick. Her heart rate keeps going up and down. She passed out," said Marisol Cruz, the mother of one of the students admitted to the hospital.

Witnesses at the H.A.. Brown Elementary School in Kensington, Pa. reported the children looked woozy and had to have help leaving the school.

Initially, HAZMAT crews, fire officials and medics responded to the scene, thinking it may have been an environmental issue that sickened the kids.

However, police later determined the children had ingested Ambien, a sleeping aid, and possibly more prescription medication that was thought to have been brought in and distributed by the 13-year-old student.

The student who allegedly gave out the pills is under arrest, police say. Some of the children that took the pill even thought it was candy, while others thought it was Advil or another common painkiller.

"High blood pressure medicine, Advil, this little girl basically had her own pharmaceutical business going on in the school," said one victim's mother.