Linda Watson saved the roaches she said she found in her sandwiches at KFC.
Posted on 01/24/2006 4:49:48 PM PST by Cagey
It was supposed to be a quick after school snack, but instead a family said it turned out more like a scene from an episode of "Fear Factor."
A family claimed it ate fast food sandwiches filled with baby roaches.
However, the real debate began after the company quickly offered a cash settlement that Linda Watson said made her even angrier.
Watson said she drove up to a KFC drive-through window in Waxahachie and came home with the surprise.
"They were all in the sandwich [and] they were alive crawling in the napkin," she said.
Her daughter, Alicia Lewis, said she ate some of the food before she saw the roaches and what she ate made her sick.
"I had diarrhea and it went on for two days," she said.
Watson kept the moldy evidence of baby roaches in her freezer, and said when she went back to complain she saw another live roach.
Health department inspectors later found two dead roaches while inspecting the same location.
"[They were] not in the food prep area," said Sonny Wilson. "One was in storage [and] the other was up closer to the drive-through window."
A pile of letters at Watson's home document negotiations with the restaurant owner's insurance company and the Watson family after the incident.
"First of all, they offered us $1,000 and I thought that was an insult for eating roaches," Watson said.
She asked for $5 million and the insurer went up to $5,000.
While the company said they want to investigate and appease the customer, they also said they are investigating Watson as well.
"We are taking this very seriously, as we do any claims about objects in the food," said Laurie Schalow, a spokeswoman for Yum! Brands, Inc., the parent company that has more than 11,000 KFC outlets around the world. "Based on her high demands, we're not ruling anything out, including possible motive."
In a widely-publicized case last year, a woman in California claimed she found a human finger in a bowl of fast food chili. Anna Ayala and her husband, Jaime Plascencia, were later convicted of planting the finger as part of a hoax. They were sentenced to stiff prison terms last week.
Watson said her only motive is justice—at somewhere between $5,000 to $1 million.
"Because it's wrong," she said. "I didn't want to eat roaches. I just wanted to eat, and if they don't think that is wrong...They are wrong for doing that to us. It's just nasty."
In spite of the roaches, the restaurant passed its inspection, hired a pest control company and remains open.
The health department director said he would still eat at the location.
However, the only time the Watson family visits the location now is with picket signs and Watson shares her feelings about the restaurant with a car bumper sticker that reads: "KFC SERVES ROACHES, BOYCOTT KFC."
Linda Watson saved the roaches she said she found in her sandwiches at KFC.
you want fries with that?
Look like roaches, smell like fraud.
From Pamela Anderson's breasts to cockroaches.........
mmmmmm, roaches, were they chocolate covered?
Hey Nagin, we may have some new residents for ya.
Look like roaches, smell like fraud.<<<<<<<<<<<<
I wouldn't be so quick to say fraud, I was a witness to someone long ago biting into a fast food hamburger that was full of GROUND GLASS!!!! That is right, GROUND GLASS, would you believe the man didn't even ask for his money back, let alone sue the place. He had three witnesses in the car with him and all were telling hime that he could retire if he would just press charges but he simply spat out the glass and said nothing to anybody. I swear on my mother's grave this is a true story.
Oddly enough, I believe ground glass.
Worst "foreign object" I've ever gotten inside a burger is my receipt (Wendy's).
Joe's Apartment. lol
Regular or Extra Crispy?
The roaches were probably the tastiest things on the menu at that place.
Severed fingers not available?
My worst experience with foreign matter in food was at a Pizza Hut restaurant. I got most of the way through my little pan pizze before discovering a used Band-Aid resting between the crust and the pan. I guess one of the cooks lost it while preparing the crust. It never occurred to me to sue anyone, but I got a refund and profuse apologies from the manager. Sickening experience, but I'm not permanently scarred.
I wouldn't be too shocked by roaches in food at some places. I've seen quite a few roaches in various parts of restaurants over the years. That said, I wouldn't expect to find a sandwich crawling with them - just the odd bug that moved too slowly and got cooked.
But did it taste like chicken?
I was at a hotel in Houston for a HPD Hispanic Officer of the Year luncheon in the early 90s and one of the people at my table bit into a salad and cut his lip on glass....same thing, he just spit it out...blotted the blood and acted as if nothing had happened....ugh!
Way back, when I was in grad school, I went to a pot luck at a house rented by a group of guys.
I took something that had to be reheated in the oven -- bad mistake. I turned the oven on & put it in, after which they thrrew it out. Told me that in their house the proper technique was to preheat the oven for at least 30 minutes so that the roaches died and fell to the bottom before you put anything in.
Sure enough, whatever I had brought had several roach bodies on it. Evidently the fled to the top of the oven where they died from heat & fell down.
I found a tooth in my Fig Newton as a child. I was thrilled because I thought I had finally lost a tooth like my big sister. I learned, however, upon proudly showing it to my horrified mother, that it was an adult molar with an old, cracked, nasty filling in it. She promised that someone would pay for it. Oh, and did someone ever pay. The grocery store manager promptly refunded her money on the Newtons and that was that. No talk of a law suit. No contacting the news. Just a refund from the store and that was the end of that. This was 1976, by the way. Had that happened today, I'd be a very wealthy lady!
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