Woman Bites Into Finger in Wendy's Chili
From Times Wire Reports

3:14 PM PST, March 24, 2005

A woman bit into a partial finger served in a bowl of chili at a
Wendy's restaurant, leading authorities to a fingerprint database
Thursday to determine who lost the digit.

The incident occurred Tuesday night at a San Jose Wendy's restaurant
and left the customer ill and distraught, said Joy Alexiou, a
spokeswoman for the Santa Clara County Health Department.

"She was so emotionally upset once she found out what it was," Alexiou
said. "She was vomiting."

Employees at the Wendy's store were asked to show investigators their
fingers after the Tuesday night incident. All employees' digits were
accounted for, officials said, adding that the well-cooked finger may
have come from a food processing plant that supplies the company.

"All of our employees have ten digits," said Denny Lynch, a spokesman
for Wendy's International Inc., based in Dublin, Ohio. He said there
have been no reports to the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration of injuries at any supplier of chili ingredients to
Wendy's.

"By law, you can't hide that sort of stuff," Lynch said. "All of our
chili suppliers report no accidents."

Investigators seized the remaining chili and closed the restaurant for
a few hours late Tuesday.

Health officials said the fingertip was approximately 1 1/2 inches
long. They believe it belongs to a woman because of the long, manicured
nail.

Alexiou said the woman, who asked officials not to identify her, is at
minimal risk of contracting illnesses from the finger.

"It's an extremely low chance because the chili was cooked at a very
high temperature that would have killed anything in the finger,"
Alexiou said. Still, she said health officials would ask the woman's
doctor to test her blood "to make sure nothing got passed to her."

Alexiou said the county coroner was attempting to find a fingerprint
match in an electronic database.

The county's health department, sheriff's department and the Santa
Clara County Environmental Health Department were working on the case
Thursday.

The Wendy's restaurant was closed for a few hours Tuesday while
investigators seized the remaining chili and its ingredients.

Asked whether customers were still buying chili Thursday, an employee
at the Wendy's said only, "We always sell a lot of chili."