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BANGOR — An incident on Sunday involving a cup of ice with a capsule in it will prompt a visit by the city Code Enforcement Office to the KFC restaurant on Longview Drive off Hogan Road.
The restaurant emptied the ice machine right away and shut it off, but a Lincoln family remained upset that their child had received an energy supplement in his soda cup and could have swallowed it without noticing it.
Donna Cousineau said her 11-year-old son Nathan was drinking from a cup after putting ice in it from a self-serve soda machine around 3 p.m. when he noticed half of a clear capsule containing white powder in his soda.
“He said, `What’s this?”‘ recalled Cousineau. “I went to the counter and said, `What the heck is this?’ One of the three girls behind the counter said, `Oh, it’s another one of those.”‘
Cousineau said the KFC employee told her some pills had been spilled and made their way into the machine Saturday night. Cousineau said she demanded to know what the capsule contained and was given the bottle by the employee.
Cousineau said the bottle contained DHEA, billed as an energy supplement. She said the label on the bottle warned it was not to be used by people under age 40.
Upon reading the label, Cousineau took her son to the emergency room at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor where an examination and a call to the poison control center indicated the boy was in no danger.
Code Enforcement Officer Dan Wellington said he was notified about the incident by Sgt. Jim Owens of the Bangor Police Department, and that he had talked with an assistant manager at the KFC afterward.
“They suspect for some reason that an employee went into another employee’s purse” and spread the supplements around a back room Saturday night, Wellington said. “They found them in several locations — some in the sink, some on the floors; they thought they had them all.”
Wellington said he was satisfied for the moment that the restaurant had stripped down the ice machine, and pointed out that although the ice is dispensed near the soda, they are totally separate.
“The soda is completely sealed,” he emphasized.
About 10 tables were filled later in the afternoon Sunday, with people still purchasing food and soda. The ice machine, however, did not dispense ice.
Wellington said a representive of his office would meet today with the KFC manager.
“They need to review the internal policies relative to bringing medication in,” Wellington said.
Richard Johnson, regional manager for Conifer Industries of New Gloucester, which owns the KFC franchise, came to Bangor Sunday afternoon after the incident to look into it. He said the company has a policy calling for employees to keep all medications and personal effects either in a secured purse or in a locked cabinet in a storage room.
“I’m still looking into it. I’m still talking to people and investigating it,” said Johnson. “When I finish my investigation, I’ll know more.
“What I know now is the health inspector looked everything over and gave us the A-OK. Any possibility of a pill on the premises is gone. The ice machines have been emptied and sanitized,” he said.
Donna Cousineau remained angry.
“My thoughts are, if they knew this had happened the night before, why wasn’t the machine dismantled? I wonder how many other people might have gotten ice from that machine and not known what they might be drinking?” she said.
Bangor Lt. Robert Welch said Sunday that any police follow-up would depend on the results of the code enforcement visit.
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