Has anybody had this problem with their beers?
Penis' Found Floating in Bottle Was Mold, Cops Say
Copyright 2001 Scripps Howard News Service
An object found in a fruit drink last week is not a human penis, as
previously believed, but mold or bacteria, Commerce City, Colo., police
now say.
"We worked off the best information we had," said Elaine Rowe, police
spokeswoman. "We didn't have any clue that it could be anything else.
It's very strange. I've never seen anything like this in law
enforcement."
Last Thursday machinist Juan Sanchez-Marchez, 41, found what appeared to
be a
3-inch section of a human penis in his 20-ounce Ora Potency Fruit Punch
after he had downed two-thirds of the drink.
He turned it over to Commerce City police, who sent it to the Adams
County (Colo.) Coroner's Office, which determined it was part of a human
penis.
The police issued a press release Friday, and the drink was taken off
grocery-store
shelves.
Rowe said Wednesday the pathologist from the coroner's office didn't do
a tissue
sample but only an external examination of the object before identifying
it as a penis.
Rowe said she could see how the pathologist could come to that
conclusion. "If you
saw it, you would have believed it," she said.
The determination that it was mold or bacteria was made Wednesday.
In the meantime, when the Denver distributor of the drink, Vancol, went
through the
bottles from the recall, workers made a disturbing discovery.
"They found a second bottle with a round, cylindrical object inside,"
said Rowe.
Vancol notified the Food and Drug Administration Tuesday, which in turn,
notified
Commerce City police. Investigators took the second bottle and its
contents and sent it to the coroner's office for examination.
"The assumption is that it is the same thing that was in the first
bottle, so it was sent
off to the FDA for a more thorough test," Rowe said.
Samples of the object found in the first bottle were also sent to the
FDA for additional analysis.
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