Taco Bell employees cleared from customer poisoning case

Taco Bell employees in Colorado had nothing to do with the poisoning of one customer back in January, according to the sheriff’s office that investigated the incident.

The said workers are employed at the Aurora Taco Bell at 16700 E. Smoky Hill Road, and surveillance cameras inside the location helped clear the workers’ names.

A customer visited Taco Bell at around 1 pm on a Sunday in January, according to a report from The Denver Post.

Deputies were called to the restaurant in the suburb of Centennial because of a disturbance. The customer had been arguing with Taco Bell employees after they told him their soda machine was broken. The restaurant workers eventually gave him a free burrito in an attempt to appease him, The Denver Post reported.

Later that evening, the man was admitted to a hospital. He told health care workers that he thought he had been poisoned. He had eaten his Taco Bell takeout at about 7 p.m., the man told deputies, according to the report.

Deputies later found what they described as a greenish substance in the taco, and tests confirmed it was rat poison, according to the report, citing sheriff’s department officials.

“After a thorough investigation, the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office has closed the case of the poison in the Taco Bell Food,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement posted on Twitter. “Investigators cleared Taco Bell employees of wrongdoing using surveillance cameras inside the restaurant.”

‘We couldn’t find anybody who could have done it’

It’s unclear who put the poison in the man’s food, according to the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office.

“Investigators spoke with the victim to try and ascertain who could have placed the poison in the tacos but were unable to find a suspect,” it said in the statement.

However, the man himself has no clue who did the deed.

“He didn’t know who did it,” said John Bartmann, sheriff’s department spokesman. “We couldn’t find anybody who could have done it. Nobody saw the tacos for about six hours.”

He explained that when the man got home, he left the tacos in the front of his truck with the windows down and the door unlocked. 

“Anybody could have gone into that truck and put something into those tacos,” he said.

Also, officials can’t turn to tech to find who put the poison in the food – there was no surveillance where he lives, said Bartmann in the report.

In October, eight workers at a unionized Starbucks South Carolina branch sued the company and one manager, claiming they were falsely accused of criminal conduct when they asked the manager for a salary increase. The workers said the manager at the store in Anderson urged police to charge them with assault and kidnapping after they pressed their manager for a raise in August, reported CTV News, citing the complaint.