A little bit of chemistry class can be a dangerous thing. While most of us learned that Coca-Cola can melt rust off an old pan or clean corrosion from a car battery, Nichole A. Maks learned of Mountain Dew destroying DNA, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
Sought out following the savage death of Michael Cerasoli, Maks was charged with first-degree murder and subsequently violently resisting arrest. When firefighters responded to a call at Cerasoli’s on Clark Street, the room was soaked in blood. With multiple stab wounds to the chest and massive trauma to the back of the head, he had been brutally beaten as he died. According to his landlord, the two had been living there for some time.
Shortly after his discovery, authorities started searching for Maks. Roughly two hours later, she was found in neighboring Holly Hill. With a blood-soaked leg, she was wielding both a hammer and knife.
Initially, she tried denying knowing the deceased, claiming instead that she had called the streets home for the last four years. When pushed, she would finally admit she knew him. Suddenly she admitted she was there to “feed the spiders,” said a Fox News report. While amid this interrogation, she asked for a diet Mountain Dew, which officers were more than happy to provide. When she got it, she didn’t go right for it. Instead, she started holding things up and playing with them.
They tried taking it away from her, and that’s when she proceeded to fight them off and try to soak herself with the drink. According to the affidavit provided by Fox News “began to resist and poured the can of soda all over her body and hair … pulling away from officers in attempts to interfere with the possible evidence on [her] body.”
While it sounds suspicious, a recent North Carolina State University study discovered that sucralose, a common ingredient in most soft drinks can destroy genetic material or damage DNA. Given all the soda-destroying things videos that have been made over the years, it’s not shocking.