Ambien Crimes And Horror Stories

Who knew that Ambien, that lovely little pill that puts so many people into a syrupy thick sleep, could cause so many people to have drug-induced freakouts? Crimes committed on Ambien aren’t like other drug crimes. Most of the assaults, accidental murders, and submarine arsons that people who are high on the world’s favorite sleep drug commit are clouded with a miasma of uncertainty. Similar to stories of people getting high on flakka and other designer drugs, Ambien users who commit crimes rarely remember doing anything other than going to bed and waking up in police custody. These Ambien horror stories are all straight out of your worst nightmares, and will definitely have you rethinking your prescription drug intake.

Not all Ambien crimes occur after people take the sleep drug; many of them concern creeps using the sleep aid to roofie someone before raping them, hoping that the hallucinatory side effects of the drug will remove the victim's memories of the crime. Everything on this list of the worst things people have done on Ambien is straight out of the horror section of your own brain. If you’re just judging by the stories included here, when people take Ambien, they murder their families, kill innocent strangers, and become locked in an elaborate nightmare scenario where they’re constantly living through a plane crash. Hopefully, there are a few people who are actually getting some sleep when they pop an Ambien at the end of the day.

In 2014, a judge labelled ex-Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, GOP head Robert Kerns a “sexually violent predator" after he drugged and raped a woman who was working as a paralegal at his North Wales law firm. According to the charges leveled against Kerns, he drugged the woman in the back of his Mercedes by giving her a cup of Ambien-laced wine.

Before the trial, Kerns’s lead attorney hired a group of "experts" to take a look at the victim's blood reports and, after they discovered the reports had been read incorrectly, he had authorities drop the charges. A state attorney brought a new case against Kerns immediately and, while many of the original charges had to be dropped, Kerns was sentenced to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. 

Joshua Boren, a police officer from Linden, Utah, spent the last year of his life drugging his wife, Kelly Boren, with Ambien and videotaping himself raping her while she was unconscious. His wife finally left him and, unable to deal the the repercussions of his actions, Boren killed his wife, their children, and his mother-in-law before turning the gun on himself. Just before their deaths, the couple entered into an intense text message argument where she said she wanted to end the marriage. In multiple text messages, she accused him of raping her. 

Prior to the murder-suicide, Boren allegedly Googled the terms “America’s most brutal serial killers” and “narcissism” before his shift ended at the police department. Then he sent a final text message to his mother: “I hope you are having a good day. Have a long and healthy life.”

Everyone's been in this situation but, unfortunately, Casey Fury didn't get away with it. In 2012, this civilian worker at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was high on 14 Klonopin and an Ambien when he went to work and ignited two bags of rags aboard the USS Miami that burned for 12 straight hours inside the submarine. Fury was immediately caught and sentenced to 17 years in prison and ordered to pay a $400 million restitution. 

Back in 2016, a 75-year-old man from Renton, Washington, took an Ambien and had such an averse reaction that he believed he was in the middle of a plane crash. In the middle of his Ambien hallucination, the man called 911 and claimed that he was in a plane with three other people. The 911 call went like this: 

Operator: Are you able to safely get out?

Caller: No. I'm pinned in.

Operator: Did it hit any buildings or just into the trees?

Caller: In the trees. In the field with trees.

Afterward, the man, who refused to be identified, claimed he only took half of an Ambien because he couldn't sleep after surgery. Sleep expert Dr. Gandis Mazeika said, "It must have seem [sic] really real to him for him to call 911. It must have been like a real hallucination for him and that does speak to some of the potency of Ambien." 

In 2014, Darren Sharper, a former safety for the Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints, was charged with a series of rapes. Prosecutors alleged he drugged women with Ambien and had his way with them. According to Arizona police, Sharper would pick women up in a bar, take them to his hotel room, and offer them a drink. Then, they would black out and wake up mid-sexual assault. In 2016, Sharper pleaded guilty to several sexual assault charges and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In April 2017, a 20-year-old who had a history of poor driving named Jack Young crashed his truck into a church bus and killed 13 senior citizens who were members of the First Baptist Church of New Braunfels, Texas. A witness who called 911 to report Young's erratic driving prior to the incident stopped to speak to Young after the crash and claimed that Young said, "I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I was texting. I'm sorry, I'm sorry." It was later released that Young was not only driving and texting, but he was high on Clonazepam and the generic forms of Ambien and Lexapro during the crash. 

In Provo, Utah, in February 2017, two women made the heinous mistake of driving home from a night of drinking and decided to bring a child into the mayhem. Susanne McClellan accepted a ride home from her friend Chelsea Fuller after they had both been drinking and, unknown to anyone else at the time, Fuller was also high on citalpram, alprazolam, and Ambien. Rather than put her daughter in a child seat, McClellan held her daughter on her lap and, in the crash, the girl suffered massive head trauma, neck and spinal cord trauma, and broken bones in her skull, neck and ribs. She died a few hours later. According to the police report, Fuller's blood-alcohol content was .233, more than double the legal limit. 

Jackie Warner, the host of Bravo TV’s Work Out, allegedly crashed her car into an telephone pole in West Hollywood on February 24, 2017, while driving under the influence of Ambien and booze. To add an extra amount of uh-oh to this story, she struck a police patrol car and almost backed over a cop who was trying to keep her from fleeing the scene. According to Warner, the last thing she remembers is taking an Ambien at home and then waking up in a hospital under arrest. The arresting officer claims that Warner was driving without pants at the time of the DUI. 

On May 7, 2014, Nixon Bourguignon strangled his girlfriend in their apartment in Haverstraw, New York. According to police reports, their two children were sleeping nearby during the horrific events. After the arrest, Bourguignon's lawyer claimed that he was high on Ambien at the time of the murder, although doctors who treated Bourguignon directly following the incident said that he showed no signs of taking the sleep aid. His lawyer claims that the only thing he remembers is that he took two of the 10 mg pills on the night of his assault and then he woke up under arrest. In 2015, a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

In 2014, Curtis M. Campbell, a member of the school board in Gloucester County, New Jersey, was arrested for giving Ambien to two six-year-olds who were sleeping over at his house for unreported reasons. There was no talk of sexual misconduct on the part of Campbell, but it's still a really creepy thing to do. Two years later, he was sentenced to six years in prison after admitting he drugged the two children with his prescription sleeping pills.