A woman said she lost consciousness at a Pacific Beach bar after stepping away from her drink and has a message for others who believe they may have been drugged against their will.
Loxie Gant is a San Diego child abuse protection advocate, who claims she was drugged on Wednesday, one week before Christmas, at a Pacific Beach dive bar called the The Silver Fox.
Gant said she and her friend had met for a dinner away from their children before the upcoming holiday bustle.
They met at the Patio on Lamont at about 5:30 p.m. where "We ate and had two glasses of wine. Then it was only 8:00 p.m. and we weren't ready to go home yet, so we walked over to The Silver Fox to have another drink," Gant told NBC 7.
She ordered another glass of wine at the bar and went to take out cash from their ATM. That's the last thing she remembers.
"After about ten minutes (my friend) said I started acting a little strangely and wobbly, incoherent."
Gant's friend ordered her an Uber back to her home where Gant's husband took care of her.
"He said I threw up five or six times and all I remember is waking up the next morning feeling confused and did not know how I got there," she said.
"I know, at some point, I had left my drink on that bar, there were some gentlemen around that bar that were talking with (my friend) when I got up," she explained. "So, at some point in time, we really assume something was put into my drink, there is really no other explanation."
Silver Fox's owner, Julie Kazmi told NBC 7 that she has worked at her bar for twenty years and never had an incident that she was aware of like this one. Kazmi said she is grateful Gant is OK but firmly believes no one at her bar would drug anyone.
Kazmi said she looked through surveillance video from that night and could see Gant and her friend but said they were not there long. Her security guard said he did not see anyone that fit the description Gant gave.
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She is cooperating with San Diego police on their investigation.
Loxie is known for her child abuse advocacy because she was sexually abused as a child. She has been speaking out against child abuse for years. Now she is 34-years-old and a mother of a four-year-old girl.
"I was just shocked at, one, that this could happen to me, a 34-year-old mom at 8:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night. And I was also just really shocked that no one really knew what to do and few people reported these incidents."
Gant said she went to social media to ask her friends if they had ever experienced this before.
"At least 15 people said they had, but only two said they filed police reports,"
She said her friend urged her to get a blood test but it was after a 12-hour window so it was too late to determine what could have been in her system. Despite, a doctor told her it sounded like she was roofied, according to Grant.
Marlea Dell'Anno, a 16-year attorney for sexual abuse victims, said often times shame prevents people from reporting situations like these.
"Unfortunately, a lot of times it is not reported because if someone, let’s say has been out drinking, they will be maybe ashamed to say they have been out drinking and think that because they were drinking somehow they would be less believable," Dell'Anno said.
"If you do something, maybe we can prevent it from happening to someone else. If you don’t, then it’s kind of the perfect crime in some ways."
San Diego Police Lt. Shawn Takeuchi said Gant's case will be difficult to solve but he wants anyone who considers themselves to be a victim of a crime to report it.
"If you were drugged against your will, that is a crime," said Lt. Takeuchi. "Even if we cannot find who may have done this to you, we can use that data. We might be able to isolate it by location, by time of day, we can often identify specific patterns."
For disclosure, Gant is running for a position on the Democratic Party Central Committee for District C in March 2020.
