Customer finds employee's finger in frozen custard **UPDATED**

[sws4420]

'I'll just put it in my mouth and ... see what it is,' man said.

WILMINGTON, North Carolina (AP) -- A man who ordered a pint of frozen chocolate custard in a dessert shop got a nasty surprise inside -- a piece of severed finger lost by an employee in an accident.

Unlike a recent incident at a Wendy's restaurant in California, no questions of truth have been raised about the finger served up to go at Kohl's Frozen Custard and found later at home by Clarence Stowers.

Officials from the state departments of agriculture and labor went to the shop Monday, and the owner confirmed one of his employees lost part of a finger in an accident with a food-processing machine. It was not immediately clear how the severed finger got into the custard.

Wilmington television station WWAY reported that Stowers found the finger in frozen custard he purchased Sunday night.

Stowers, who did not immediately return calls Monday from The Associated Press, told the station: "I thought it was candy because they put candy in your ice cream ... to make it a treat. So I said, 'OK, well, I'll just put it in my mouth and get the ice cream off of it and see what it is.'"

Stowers said he spit the object out, but still couldn't identify it. So he went to his kitchen, rinsed it off with water -- and "just started screaming."

Stowers said he planned to contact a lawyer.

Shop owner Craig Thomas did not immediately return a message left by the AP Monday.

Joe Reardon of the Agriculture Department's food and drug division said state officials closed the shop while the food processing equipment involved in the accident was cleaned and sanitized.


http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/02/custard.finger.ap/index.html

[mb*]

here we go, again. :jerkit:

[sws4420]

This one is real, though.

[mb*]

so the article said.

[Razzle]

i think im going to start eating only what i grow, and KNOW where it came from....

[mb*]

and you'll know it's YOUR fingertip you mistook for a crouton.

[Razzle]

and im OK with that...yer right, at least its MY fingertip...

[sws4420]

Whose finger looks like a crouton? :huh:

I wanna see pictures, mother fucker.

[Mikey]

oh yay....another one, true or not....

[sws4420]

Here's an excerpt about this story from msnbc.com.


The piece of index finger, which an employee had severed at the first knuckle, was found Sunday by Clarence Stowers in a pint of dessert he purchased from Kohl’s Frozen Custard in the coastal town of Wilmington.

Kohl’s owner Craig Thomas said 23-year-old employee Brandon Fizer tried to catch a bucket of custard he had dropped and accidentally put his finger into a machine that beats the custard mix. As shop workers tried to help Fizer, a drive-thru window attendant unknowingly scooped frozen custard from the bucket containing the finger and served it to Stowers.

The state Department of Labor is investigating to determine whether Kohl’s was in compliance with state workplace safety rules — a probe that likely will take about two weeks.

Stowers did not return repeated calls for comment Tuesday. He has reportedly hired a lawyer and is holding on to the severed finger as evidence in a possible lawsuit.

“I thought it was candy because they put candy in your ice cream or whatever to make it a treat,” he told a Wilmington television station on Sunday. “So I proceeded to put the object in my mouth, got all the ice cream off of it and spit it in my hand.”

After rinsing it off with water, Stowers said he realized what it was and “just started screaming.”

While national statistics show that people do lose fingertips on the job, they rarely do so in situations where they can get into food.

Mark Zak, an economist with the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, said that in 2003 the agency recorded 5,620 nonfatal fingertip amputations in private workplaces that resulted in the loss of at least one day of work. He said only 300 of those occurred at leisure and hospitality workplaces — a category that includes restaurants and ice cream parlors.

No specific statistics are available on how often amputated digits actually end up in the food supply, said Fred Blosser, a spokesman for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

[Mikey]

interesting

[sws4420]

Dude. That's 1" of finger on a normal sized man. How did that go from mixer to drive through in such a short amount of time? If I were to lose an appendage in food, you'd think they'd turn the machine off and freeze operations for at least a little while.

Heh. I sad freeze operations. *ba doom ching*

[mb*]

RALEIGH, N.C. - To a dessert shop customer, the severed fingertip found in a pint of frozen custard could be worth big dollars in a potential lawsuit. To the shop worker who lost it, the value is far more than monetary.

But Clarence Stowers still has the digit, refusing to return the evidence so it could be reattached. And now it's too late for doctors to do anything for 23-year-old Brandon Fizer.

"I'm not saying who has it, but somebody has it," Stowers said this week in a telephone interview, refusing to let on where the fingertip is now.

Soon after Stowers found the finger in a mouthful of chocolate soft-serve he bought Sunday at Kohl's Frozen Custard in Wilmington, he put it in his freezer at home, taking it out only occasionally to show to television cameras.

He refused to give it to the shop's owner, and refused to give it to a doctor who was treating Fizer, who accidentally stuck his hand in a mixing machine and had his right index finger lopped off at the first knuckle.

Medical experts say an attempt to reattach a severed finger can generally be made within six hours.

But according to the shop's management, Stowers wouldn't give it back when he was in the store 30 minutes after the accident.

"The general manager attempted to retrieve it and rush it to the hospital," reads a statement posted Thursday on Kohl's Web site. "Unfortunately, the customer refused to give it to her and declared that he would be calling the TV stations and an attorney as he exited the store."

Officials at Cape Fear Hospital said their efforts to retrieve the finger also failed.

Dr. James Larson, director of emergency medicine for UNC Hospitals, who was not involved in the case, said once Stowers took the finger home and froze it, it was too late to even try for reattachment.

"You can't freeze it. It kills the cells," Larson said.

The doctor said the best way to preserve a severed limb is to wrap it in saline-soaked gauze, place it in a plastic bag and store that in ice water.

Stowers' attorney, Lee Andrews of Greensboro, wouldn't say if a lawsuit against Kohl's is planned, saying he needed "to get some more facts."

But Andrews said his client is concerned about possible disease in the fingertip and kept it because he wanted someone to test it for "all the diseases that are out here now."

"He's upset to the point that he's been debilitated to some degree," Andrews said.

"Emotionally, it's been very upsetting to him."

Even if Stowers decides to sue, an expert in medical law said the fingertip could easily have been returned while preserving the evidence.

"The man who lost the finger has the superior claim," said Paul Lombardo, who teaches at the University of Virginia's law school. "It's his finger and he might be able to use it."

Lombardo said Stowers could have photographed the fingertip, taken a bit of flesh for DNA analysis or gotten an affidavit from the surgeon who would have reattached the digit.

"There is nothing that would prevent preserving the chain of evidence," Lombardo said.

Fizer is dealing with his loss in private. The Carolina Beach resident's mother, Sheri Fizer, said the family had been instructed by an attorney not to talk about the case.

Public opinion seemed to be running against Stowers.

"It's a mystery how that customer can live with himself after he refused to return the finger so that doctors might try to reattach it," said an editorial Thursday by the Star-News of Wilmington.

"Unless he offers a better explanation for that decision, people will assume that customer Clarence Stowers cared less about another person's loss of a body part than about his chance to squeeze some bucks out of the custard stand."

For Kohl's, Sunday's fingertip amputation was the second time in less than a year that a worker lost a finger on the same frozen custard machine. The worker was found by investigators to have been negligent in the July 2004 incident, and the state Labor Department cleared the company of wrongdoing.