Man says he was poisoned after eating Taco Bell burrito? I smell a rat
Hatred is sometimes defined as swallowing poison and hoping that your enemy dies.
So I have to wonder if that isn’t exactly what happened to a Colorado man who became “violently ill” after eating a Taco Bell burrito that was found to contain rat poison.
To me the greater mystery is how people can eat at Taco Bell without becoming violently ill, but that’s another column.
The man in question had been described as “argumentative,” which is the policespeak word for someone who was being the word that rhymes with "glass bowl." According to Fox News, “The customer, who has not been publicly identified, went to the drive-thru of the fast-food restaurant in Aurora around 1 p.m. on Jan. 15 when he got into an argument with workers because the soda machine was not working.”
First, as someone who has almost myself been sent to the Nervous Hospital by the soda machines at Five Guys, I feel his pain. Half soda fountain, half roulette wheel, they make the act of procuring a Diet Coke an adventure achieved only by people with advanced physics degrees.
I also despise that I’m being asked to do more of the work so the fast food companies can get by hiring fewer people at 14 cents an hour to get the Diet Coke for me. At a convenience store this week, I took a meager purchase to the counter where the clerk announced it was “self check out” and pointed to what appeared to be the control panel of a rocket ship, expecting me to be able to figure it out. Boy was he in for a surprise. I looked at the machinery, looked at him, looked back at the machines — and made such a mess of it that I swear, the poor employee, by helping me through it, spent about five times the amount of time it would have taken him just to check me out himself.
But back to the rats.
When informed that he would be unable to obtain a drink, the man demanded that he be given a free burrito instead. He was informed that this would not be possible until, and I’m guessing here, the line behind him grew to about 2 miles in length, at which point the employees gave in.
That great sigh of relief you’re hearing is Florida saying, “For once it’s not us.”
Later that day, The Washington Post reported, he became violently ill and was hospitalized. “Deputy John Bartmann of the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday that the man told hospital personnel that he had ingested rat poison in a taco he was served, and a deputy confirmed that the item contained ‘a greenish-gray substance,’” the story said.
Lab tests confirmed the poison, so all eyes fell on the Taco Bell franchise in question. The manager emphatically stated, “We don’t carry poison in the restaurant.” Not the traditional kind, anyway. But those flaming orange concoctions that they show on TV look to me like they’ll get you in the long run.
Still, the restaurant shut down while police investigated. Which didn’t take very long, because everything these days is on video tape. At no point during the man’s confrontation did anyone in the kitchen pull out a shaker box of rat poison and salt a taco with it.
I’m no precinct detective, but I would also find it curious that the fellow seemed to know what he had ingested as rat poison. I mean, I’m sure no one at the restaurant would have told him: “OK, just for that we’re putting rat poison in your food. Enjoy.”
It later came out that the man was “known” to Taco Bell employees, as in he frequently showed up spoiling for a fight. And when police tried to ask follow-up questions he was nowhere to be found. Just like a rat.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Burrito laced with rat poison perhaps not act of revenge you'd think?
