Thread: Woman Eating Chili Bites Into Human Finger

Sales Drop at Wendy's After Finger Found
By ANDY RESNIK

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Sales have dropped sharply at Wendy's fast food restaurants in the area of northern California where a woman claimed she found part of a finger in a bowl of chili, but analysts say the company's long-term prognosis should not be affected.

Peter Oakes, a restaurant analyst with Piper Jaffray & Co. in New York, said he doesn't expect Wendy's business to suffer long term from the discovery Tuesday night of a partial finger.

The hamburger chain serves about 6 million meals a day across the country and has a ``national reputation for both quality and cleanliness,'' he said.

``To me the yard stick here is whether the single incident prompts the consumer to lose confidence in the brand. It's understandable to see some kind of knee-jerk reaction,'' Oakes said.


Franchise owners have informed the company's corporate headquarters in the Columbus suburb of Dublin that business is down, said Denny Lynch, spokesman for Wendy's International Inc. He said he could not release specific sales figures because Wendy's does not own those restaurants. ``It is an isolated incident. However, it is dramatically affecting sales in that market,'' Lynch said.


Authorities in San Jose, Calif., planned to search a fingerprint database on Friday to try to identify the finger's owner.

Capt. Bob Dixon of the Santa Clara County coroner's office said he did not know when their fingerprint expert might have a match. ``Nobody's claimed it yet,'' he said.

U.S. financial markets were closed Friday for the holiday weekend. The day before, on Thursday, Wendy's shares rose 43 cents, or 1.1 percent, to close at $39.43 on the New York Stock Exchange - near the high end of their 52-week trading range of $31.74 to $42.12.

Wendy's said the finger did not come from the restaurant's employees. It is also confident company suppliers are not to blame because of product coding that allows the company to trace where a product comes from, the day it was produced, when it was shipped and when it arrived at the restaurant, Lynch said.


However, he acknowledged the process was ``not absolutely 100 percent perfect.''


Matt Baun, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said it was doubtful a person working at a federal beef producer would have lost the finger in an accident. ``The production line would have stopped, there would have been immediate need for medical attention and the meat products would be destroyed and not used for food,'' he said.

A Louisville, Ky., lawyer who has handled similar cases said he doesn't expect Wendy's image to take much of a hit. Bo Bolus, who has represented plaintiffs over foreign objects found in McDonald's food and defended insurance companies against those claims, said consumers tend to realize that incidents like the one at Wendy's are accidents. ``I haven't found any big institutional problems in the fast-food chains,'' Bolus said. ``I still go to McDonald's with my four boys.''



03/26/05 13:50


http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...17.htm&sc=1333

Originally Posted by Trishntx

Last week, my son found a cockroach in a dessert at a Chinese food place and yesterday found a rubber band, frozen in a piece of ice at another take out place.

Last weekend, at TGI Fridays, I was eating their fish (sticks) and chomped down on a huge piece of hard plastic, the waiter just happend to be refilling my water when I took it out of my mouth. He was horrified. I think the worst thing was when I found maggots floating in some hot chocolate I had gotten from the Sonic.

Not being me but if I were you, I would never ever go out to eat again...that is just horrible. I am glad you haven't suffered any harm, besides mentally, from any of these incidents.

Originally Posted by Patchouli

That's really gross. It makes you afraid to eat out. At least if she was at KFC she could have said it was finger licking good. Okay that was bad.

Bad???? LOL...sick sick sick..haha...you are too funny.

Originally Posted by Patchouli

It gives new meaning to finger foods.

Somebody stop her...lol

I just heard on the news that the woman has already filed a lawsuit against Wendy's.....unreal. Anything can happen anymore, kinda makes you want to raise your own garden and your own cattle just for precaution. This totally grosses me out. EWWWWWWWWWW!!!

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=652223

April 8, 2005 — Police have searched the Las Vegas home of the woman who claims she found a human fingertip in a bowl of chili at a San Jose, Calif., Wendy's restaurant last month.

San Jose and Las Vegas executed the search warrant for Anna Ayala's home on Wednesday. Authorities said it is part of an ongoing investigation into where the finger came from.

"We are looking into every aspect in this case," San Jose police spokeswoman Gina Tepoorten told The Associated Press. "We are talking to people she knows as well as the finder of the finger. … We want to determine who this finger belongs to and how it ended up in a bowl of chili."


The alleged victim says she is not pleased about the latest turn in the case.

"You know what, I'm sick of it," said Ayala, 39. "I'm tired of it."

Her son said the search warrant mentioned the possibility that the fingertip came from Ayala's dead aunt, though police would not confirm that detail.

"Knowing that there was a human remain in my mouth … it is disgusting," Ayala told ABC News' "Good Morning America" shortly after reporting the grisly discovery. "It is tearing me apart inside."


No Missing Fingers

Wendy's has been conducting its own investigation. So far, it has found no indication the partial finger came from one of its employees.

"We are confident at this present time … [that] the source did not come out of our restaurant," said Steve Jay, Wendy's West Coast corporate spokesman.

Wendy's officials told ABC News San Francisco station KGO-TV that they have checked all of the employees in the San Jose area and no one was missing a finger. They also contacted the company's suppliers, and no one in the area reported any finger or hand problems.

Wendy's has offered a $50,000 reward to the first person providing verifiable information leading to the positive identification of the origin of the finger. The Santa Clara County coroner's office, using a partial fingerprint to attempt to find a match in an electronic database, came up empty. DNA testing is still being conducted.

Posted 4/8/2005

Woman claiming she found a finger in chili has sued before


LAS VEGAS - The woman who claims she bit into a human finger while eating chili at a Wendy's restaurant has a history of filing lawsuits — including a claim against another fast-food restaurant.

Anna Ayala who hired a San Jose, Calif., attorney to represent her in the Wendy's case, has been involved in at least half a dozen legal battles in the San Francisco Bay area, according to court records.

She brought a suit against an ex-boss in 1998 for sexual harassment and sued an auto dealership in 2000, alleging the wheel fell off her car.

Speaking through the front door of her Las Vegas home Friday, Ayala claimed police are out to get her and were unnecessarily rough as they executed a search warrant at her home on Wednesday. "Lies, lies, lies, that's all I am hearing," she said. "They should look at Wendy's."

Ayala acknowledged, however, that her family received a settlement for their medical expenses about a year ago after her daughter got sick from food at an El Pollo Loco restaurant in Las Vegas. She declined to provide any further details.

San Jose police have joined the Las Vegas police fraud unit in the investigation into how a 1 inch-long fingertip ended up in Ayala's bowl of chili at the San Jose Wendy's on March 22. Ayala has sued the franchise owner, JEM Management.

Wendy's spokesman Bob Bertini would not comment on the investigation Friday. The company, however, maintains that the finger did not enter the food chain in its ingredients. The employees at the San Jose store were found to have all their fingers, and no suppliers of Wendy's ingredients have reported any hand or finger injuries, the company said.

On Thursday, Wendy's offered a $50,000 reward to anyone providing verifiable information leading to the positive identification of the origin of the finger.

Ken Bono, a family friend who lives at the home, said officers searched freezers, a picnic cooler in the backyard and the belongings of an aunt who used to live at the house. San Jose police dismissed rumors that the finger might have belonged to Ayala's late aunt.

However, investigators said they were still looking into the possibility that the missing finger was the result of an industrial accident or foul play. "The simple fact of the matter is that the finger came from somebody." said Sgt. Nick Muyo, a spokesman for the SJPD.

The Santa Clara County Coroner's Office used a partial fingerprint to attempt to find a match in an electronic database of missing people and those with criminal histories, but came up empty. DNA testing is still being conducted on the finger.

Bertini said Wendy's stores in the area have suffered from declining sales since the incident. "Obviously the store has been down significantly," he said. "This has been an ordeal for all of us. Hopefully there will be a resolution soon."

http://www.usatoday.com/money/indust...M_Exclude=Juno