Woman drinks lye

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Опубликовано: 6 окт. 2014 г.

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CCTV has captured the moment an unsuspecting customer drank tea in a restaurant which has been accidentally spiked with the same chemical used to clean deep-fryers.

In the video, Jan Harding, 67, takes a quick sip from a cup of iced tea she poured out of a self-serve machine at Dickey's Barbeque, in Utah

Immediately, Mrs Harding spits out the drink and rinses her mouth. She can be seen bracing herself against the counter until restaurant staff arrives.

The tea had been laced with lye, an odorless chemical that is used for degreasing deep fryers.

Even after just one sip, Mrs Harding's esophagus was left burned, with deep ulcers forming and forcing her to stay in hospital for two weeks.

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Опубликовано: 15 авг. 2014 г.

Tea Lye Drink Woman drinks sweet Tea Laced with LYE in Dickey's Barbecue Pit Critical Condition Jan Harding sweet Tea Laced with LYE in Dickey's Barbecue Pit in Critical Condition Woman drinks sweet Tea Laced with LYE in Dickey's Barbecue Pit in Critical Condition Jan Harding and her husband had just arrived at a Utah restaurant for a relaxing lunch with friends when she filled her cup with sweet tea from a self-serve beverage station.

The 67-year-old grandmother took one sip before spitting it out and exclaiming to her husband: "I think I just drank acid."

In fact, the tea was laced with a highly toxic industrial cleaning solution meant for degreasing deep fryers, authorities said. It contained the odorless chemical lye, the active ingredient in drain cleaners.

Four days later, Harding was in critical condition Thursday at a Salt Lake City hospital's burn unit, unable to talk and fighting for her life, lawyer Paxton Guymon said. She hasn't improved since Sunday, when she and her husband went to Dickey's Barbecue Pit in South Jordan after church.

Investigators and the restaurant manager have told the Hardings that a worker mistook the cleaning product for sugar and accidentally mixed large quantities of it into the iced-tea dispenser, Guymon said.

"It's disturbing that this kind of toxic, poisonous material would be in the food prep area and somehow find its way into the iced tea vat," the attorney said. "I don't know how something like that can happen."

South Jordan police are still investigating how the chemical ended up in the sweet-tea container, but they think it was accidental, Police Cpl. Sam Winkler said. South Jordan is a suburb of 60,000 about 15 miles south of Salt Lake City.

Investigators are reviewing video footage from inside the restaurant and interviewing staff who worked that day and in the days leading up to the incident.

They have determined Harding is the only victim, Winkler said. It appears she was the first to drink the tea that day, and restaurant employees dumped it out after she was burned, he said.

John Thomson, owner of the Dickey's Barbecue South Jordan franchise, said in a statement Thursday that he's praying for Jan Harding and cooperating with investigators. He said he would refrain from commenting on the specifics of what happened out of respect for the Hardings. His restaurant is one of 400 Dickey's around the country in the Dallas-based chain.

Guymon said he will wait for the police investigation to finish before determining what legal action to take.

The chemical, also known as sodium hydroxide, comes in both liquid and powder form. The one the worker added to the tea was a powder, Guymon said.

The chemical also is in products such as Drano, said Tom Richmond, professor of chemistry at the University of Utah. "It would start dissolving your insides," he said.

Doctors are trying to determine if it caused any tears in Harding's esophagus or stomach, Guymon said. The woman lives in the Salt Lake City suburb of Sandy with her husband of 47 years, Jim Harding. They have three adult children and six grandchildren.

Jim Harding and the couple's children are by her side at the hospital, praying for her recovery, Guymon said. They declined to comment through the attorney, who spoke on their behalf.

It's unclear if the employee who added the chemical still works at the restaurant or if anyone there faced any kind of disciplinary action. Guymon didn't know, and a Dickey's corporate spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The restaurant has remained open since the incident, said Jeff Oaks, Food Protection Bureau manager at the Salt Lake County Health Department. His office inspected the establishment Monday and found all chemicals properly labeled and separated from food items.

The health department is awaiting results of the criminal investigation to determine if it should issue any violations. It's unlikely the restaurant would be fined or shut down, Oaks said. The department focuses on education and prevention over punitive measures, he said.

Health officials aren't aware of anything like this ever happening in Salt Lake County before. Oaks said restaurant-goers don't need to be worried.

"I believe this to be an isolated incident," he said.

KRON4 – San Francisco Bay Area News

No Charges Filed After Woman Drinks Lye in Iced Tea

By Candice Naranjo

Fri Sep 26th, 2014 2:13pm America/Los_Angeles

RELATED COVERAGE

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — No charges will be filed in the case of a customer who nearly died after unknowingly drinking iced tea mixed with chemicals at a suburban Salt Lake City restaurant, prosecutors said Friday.

But Dickey’s Barbecue isn’t off the hook just yet: Jan Harding and her family will enter into mediation with the restaurant later this year to try to reach a monetary agreement, her attorney said. If that doesn’t work, they’ll file a lawsuit.

Harding and her family accept the decision by Salt Lake County Attorney Sim Gill and are glad the investigation is complete, their lawyer Paxton Guymon said.

“I agree that there was no intent to injure, but the level of recklessness on a number of fronts was so egregious that it was a train wreck waiting to happen,” Guymon said. “Somebody was going to get hurt. … There was very poor management, poor training. There were a lot of things that could have been differently to prevent this from happening.”

The Dallas-based Dickey’s Barbecue Restaurants Inc. didn’t immediately have any comment. The company earlier said the incident was isolated and unprecedented in the chain’s 73-year history.

Authorities have said an employee at Dickey’s Barbecue in South Jordan unintentionally put the heavy-duty cleaner lye in a sugar bag, and another worker on Aug. 10 mistakenly mixed it into an iced-tea dispenser.

Later that day, Harding took a single sip of the sweetened iced tea while out to eat with her husband, and suffered deep, ulcerated burns to her esophagus. She was hospitalized in critical condition.

Lye, an odorless chemical that looks like sugar, is used for degreasing deep fryers and is the active ingredient in Drano.

Harding, 67, spent nearly two weeks in a Salt Lake City hospital. She has been out of the hospital for weeks but still hasn’t regained her sense of taste, her lawyer said.

She continues to see doctors about the damage to her esophagus. She also still suffers some emotional distress.

“It’s been challenging for her to go out and eat,” Guymon said. “There’s still some lingering anxiety.”

Gill said Friday that after an extensive police investigation, prosecutors determined there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

They analyzed more than 700 hours of video from inside the restaurant, along with interviews with several current and former employees and business partners, he said. They also reviewed another lye incident at the restaurant in July, when a worker burned herself when she stuck her finger into a sugar container and licked it to test for the chemical cleaner.

“There were certainly errors or mishaps that occurred, but none of that rose to the level of what we were charged to do: Look for criminal charges,” Gill said.

Harding’s family is tentatively scheduled to meet with Dickey’s Barbecue representatives in November to see if they can reach a monetary agreement, Guymon said. They also want the chain to change how its restaurants handle dangerous substances to ensure nothing like this happens again, he said.

Harding and her Baptist minister husband, Jim Harding, declined to comment Friday. They previously said they were not angry with anyone at Dickey’s and decided to share their story in hopes that other restaurants will take measures to prevent something similar from happening, perhaps by adding colored dye to chemicals.

“My clients are really adamant that this is about more than money,” Guymon said. “That’s why the mediation approach is the right one to try at this point. If you go to court, you can’t necessarily force them to adopt some new policy.”

(Copyright 2014, The Associated Press, All rights reserved.)

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — No charges will be filed in the case of a customer who nearly died after unknowingly drinking iced tea mixed with chemicals at a suburban Salt Lake City restaurant, prosecutors said Friday. But Dickey’s Barbecue isn’t off the hook just yet: Jan Harding and her family will enter into mediation […]

Woman drinks lye-laced sweet tea at Utah restaurant, suffers severe burns to mouth, throat

Published August 14, 2014

SALT LAKE CITY – Police are reviewing video footage and interviewing staff from a Utah restaurant where a woman drank sweet tea laced with an industrial cleaning chemical, severely burning her mouth and throat.

South Jordan Police Cpl. Sam Winkler said Thursday investigators hope videos from inside Dickey's Barbecue Pit in South Jordan will reveal how the chemical known as lye ended up in a jug with sweet tea.

The 67-year-old woman was eating at the restaurant Sunday when she poured herself a glass of tea from the beverage bar. She is in critical condition.

Winkler says it appears to be an accident, though authorities haven't made a final determination.

He says the woman is the only victim. Her name has not been released.