Whenever you eat out or grab a quick meal from a store or restaurant to eat on the go, you never expect anything other than advertised. So, when an ingredient that was not mentioned shows up, it can be quite upsetting.
In this case, it was very shocking for a customer to find a human body part in their food. Keep reading to learn more.
A woman is suing a local Mediterranean eatery in New York after she claims she found a human body part in her meal. A lawsuit filed in New York County Supreme Court earlier this month claims Corcoran realtor Mary Elizabeth Smith was ‘permanently traumatized’ after she ate her food from Create and found it to contain a human finger.
The 43-year-old Chelsea resident says she allegedly got a chicken wrap ‘to go’ from Create, a restaurant in Astoria, Queens, where she would eat at least twice a week.
When she bit into her wrap, she discovered ‘human tissue, a fingertip’ according to her attorney, Robert Menna.
“Luckily, she didn’t swallow it. But it still traumatized her,” he said in a statement to People. The restaurant owner, Teddy Karagiannis, is denying these allegations.
The complaint also stated that the ‘negligence’ on the restaurant’s part also caused Smith to ‘sustain serious injuries and suffer pain, shock and mental anguish.’
Since the incident, she has been undergoing intense antiretroviral therapy (ART) to protect her against any possible diseases the fingertip might have exposed her to.
Allegedly, she went to a medical appointment and offered to pay the doctor $75 to tell her it was ‘anything’ other than a fingertip.
The restaurant owner, Karagiannis, has issued a statement in defense of his business. He said the claims were ‘completely fraudulent’ and ‘ludicrous’.
He also says he plans on countersuing Smith for ‘slander’ and shared that all the food they serve goes through multiple inspection points before it is served.
“It’s impossible. It cannot happen in my style of operation,” he said.
He also took issue with Menna’s admission that the lab result shows the finger belonged to a female. “I never have female employees working the prep line,” he pointed out. Smith, however, says there was a woman working at Create the day she bought the fateful wrap.
The restaurant owner, however, says that Smith is declining ‘DNA testing’ on the fingertip, which he thinks can prove the finger tip did not come from one of his employees.
He speculated whether Smith picked up the finger from the street.
When asked about where the fingertip came from, Smith said, “I really wish it hadn’t happened.”
Her attorney, Menna, claims the entire thing has been ‘horrifying’ for his client. He also stated that the restaurant’s insurance company has denied the allegations, despite the evidence, including photographs of the fingertip and a forensic report.
“So we will let the court take care of it,” he said.
As for Smith, she says the incident has left her “very cautious about anything that [she is] eating.”
“It took me a really long time to work up the courage to eat chicken again. Never in my wildest dreams did I think this would happen,” she shared.
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