Police Testing Orange Juice From Needled Cartons

An orange juice carton with a note pinned to it with a needle from a hypodermic syringe was found in a Woodland Hills supermarket Tuesday, a day after a similarly marked juice carton was found in a nearby store, Los Angeles police said.

And like the note on the first carton, the note on the one discovered Tuesday indicated that the carton’s contents might be contaminated, police said.

Police were testing the juice from both cartons for poison. It could take as long as three days for results of the tests to be known, police said.

Vons officials said Tuesday that an extensive independent test of the carton of juice found in their store showed it was not contaminated.

The latest marked juice carton, a 64-ounce container of Minute Maid orange juice, was found at 3 a.m. by an employee at an Alpha Beta store in the 6200 block of Topanga Canyon Boulevard, police said.

About 12 hours earlier, a carton of Minute Maid orange juice of the same size was found with a note pinned to it with a syringe needle by a customer at the Vons supermarket in the 23300 block of Mulholland Drive in Woodland Hills.

Police said Tuesday they are working with officials from both stores and with Coca-Cola Co., the maker of Minute Maid products, to determine who tampered with the cartons.

“They are similar incidents: same brand of orange juice, same size container,” said Lt. Lee Lorenze. “The notes are similar. Right now, we have no idea . . . who did it.”

Both stores removed all Minute Maid orange juice from their shelves. Police have asked that they be notified as a safety precaution by anyone who recently purchased Minute Maid orange juice from either of the stores.

Police would not disclose what was written in the notes. They would only say that their inscriptions could be taken to mean that the contents of the cartons were poisoned.

Bill Wade, a spokesman for Alpha Beta, said the note found on the carton in that store said, “Unsafe Packaging.”

Officials for both supermarket chains and Coca-Cola said there were no indications that any other products in the stores were tampered with. Michelle Beale, a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola, said there have been no other reports of tampering with Minute Maid products in other areas of the country.

“We believe they are both isolated incidents,” Beale said. “We are cooperating with the police to attempt to find out who is doing it. We do not think there is anything wrong with the orange juice. It is just unfortunate that someone would do this.”

Vons spokeswoman Mary McAboy said the marked juice carton found at 2 p.m. Monday was taken to a laboratory, where preliminary testing could not rule out contamination. She said a second more extensive test of the juice concluded that there was no contamination.

“The preliminary test was positive, meaning there was a possibility of contamination,” McAboy said. “The second showed it had not been contaminated as threatened.”

But on Tuesday police said the juice would be tested again.

“We want to analyze it ourselves,” Lorenze said. “We don’t want to take any chances.”

In the tampering incident at Vons, the carton was found by a customer on a non-refrigerated shelf, where juice is not normally displayed. It was turned over to the store’s manager, officials said.

“The carton was still cold when it was turned in, which led us to believe it had just recently been tampered with,” said McAboy. “The note threatened contamination, and we immediately pulled the product off the shelves.”

In the second incident, the carton was also found on a non-refrigerated shelf, this time by an Alpha Beta clerk who was stocking shelves after the store had closed.

Regardless of whether the juice cartons are found to be contaminated, it is a crime to tamper with such products, Lorenze said.