Two employees at a Wendy’s restaurant in Union, South Carolina, are facing criminal charges after a customer discovered that the food she was told had been remade was actually her original order retrieved from the trash and contaminated before being handed back to her.
The Union Police Department arrested 19-year-old Trinity Lashell Rice on Tuesday and 23-year-old Aaliyah Shuntai Sanders on Wednesday. Both face charges of malicious tampering with human food. Rice and Sanders were each booked into the Union County Detention Center on a $20,000 bond.
How the incident unfolded
The incident took place on May 30 at the Wendy’s location on North Duncan Bypass. A customer placed a drive-thru order and encountered a problem with her food, leading her to request a refund and hand the meal back to staff. She was told the order would be remade, and she left the restaurant believing that to be the case.
While she was eating what she thought was a fresh order at home, she received a phone call from someone at the store warning her to stop eating immediately. The caller told her that an employee had spat in her original food, retrieved it from the trash, and given it back to her as though it were a new order.
The customer stopped eating and contacted the restaurant. She spoke with a manager, who reviewed surveillance footage of the incident and confirmed what the caller had described. Wendy’s Employees visible in the footage were identified and written up at the restaurant level before the matter was referred to police.
What the investigation found
Police were not notified until June 2, several days after the incident. Once the Union Police Department began its investigation, the surveillance footage and employee accounts provided enough evidence to move forward with arrests.
One of the suspects was reportedly the on-duty manager at the time of the incident, though authorities have not specified which of the two arrested individuals held that role. A third Wendy’s employee was also disciplined by the restaurant in connection with the incident, according to police, though that person’s identity has not been released and no criminal charges have been filed against them.
The charges and what they mean
Malicious tampering with human food is a serious criminal offense in South Carolina. The charge reflects conduct that puts a consumer’s health at risk through deliberate contamination of food or drink, regardless of whether the person consuming it suffered a measurable physical injury.
In this case, the customer unknowingly ate food that had been spat in and pulled from a trash receptacle before being presented to her as a freshly prepared order. The fact that she was mid-meal when she received the warning call makes the sequence of events particularly distressing.
The case also raises questions about how the tampering was allowed to happen and why a fellow employee felt compelled to warn the customer by phone rather than through an internal channel. That call, made from within the restaurant while the customer was already eating, was the only reason she became aware of what had occurred.
What comes next
Rice and Sanders remain in custody pending bond resolution. The investigation by the Union Police Department is ongoing, and additional details about the specific roles each person played in the Wendy’s incident have not been publicly released.
The Wendy’s location involved has not issued a public statement. The chain’s corporate office had not responded to media requests for comment at the time of publication.