The Oregon man accused of feeding drug-laced mango smoothies to his daughter’s friends showed a creepy interest in his co-workers’ children, The Post has learned.
When Michael Meyden was working as an HR director for renewable energy company Avangrid, he was known around the office for being friendly and jovial — but one of his former colleagues now questions his motives.
“He always wanted to know about our families,” a colleague who worked with him for about two years until 2021 told The Post.
“He’d ask about my kids, how old they are, what extracurriculars they liked. Then he’d tell me what his kids were up to. It seemed really innocent at the time.”
But the colleague says his interest extended past office hours. “He was the one co-worker who would like my daughter’s cheer pics on Facebook,” she recalls.
“He would ask questions about her, he knew my kids’ names and ages. He kept track of that stuff. I thought he was just being nice.”
Meyden, 57, faces multiple charges stemming from an Aug. 26 sleepover last year at his $1.2 million home in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
According to a probable cause affidavit obtained by The Post, Meyden served three of his daughter’s 12-year-old friends mango smoothies laced with benzodiazepine, a depressant that slows the nervous system.
Two of the girls allegedly fell into a “thick, deep sleep,” according to the affidavit. A third girl frantically texted her parents and friends, asking for someone to help her.
Soon, parents of all the girls descended on the home at 3 a.m. The following day, the girls’ parents took them to the hospital after they required help walking and could not recall what happened to them the night before, with one girl telling police she “blacked out” after drinking two smoothies, the affidavit alleges.
According to a statement from the Lake Oswego Police Department, officers later determined that Meyden “was responsible for the drugs detected in the girls’ bloodstreams.”
Meyden faces felony charges of causing another person to ingest a controlled substance and application of a controlled substance to the body of another person.
Police have not speculated on Meyden’s motive. He has pleaded not guilty and is free on $50,000 bond.
Meyden and his wife divorced last October less than two months after the incident, according to a divorce judgment obtained by The Post. Now in hiding in Vancouver, Washington, Meyden has no contact with his children, sources told The Post.
“The violation of trust is the worst betrayal any of us in the family have ever experienced,” a relative of his wife, Yukiko Ishida, told The Post.
“He’s not fit to be around children, and I don’t think his own kids will ever talk to him again.”
Neither of Meyden’s two children have been named as victims in the court documents.
Meyden’s attorney Mark Cogan did not return The Post’s request for comment, but previously told The Oregonian his client “is presumed innocent, and we hope that people will reserve judgment until all of the facts and circumstances are known.”
Meyden is due in court again next month.
