Tampering Scare Swamps Stores With Turkeys

Customers deluged a Tucson supermarket chain with turkeys, some of them already cooked, after a man claimed to have injected some of the birds with cyanide.

Jim Acton, vice president of media operations for Smith’s Food & Drug stores, said Friday that 6,000 to 10,000 turkeys would be buried in a landfill north of Tucson.

They included turkeys that the store took off its shelves and those that customers returned. Acton estimated that the cyanide scare would cost the supermarket chain as much as $200,000.

A man called reporter-anchorwoman Barbara Grijalva of KOLD-TV on Wednesday to say he had injected some of Smith’s turkeys with cyanide. Police have said there was no evidence that the birds were tainted.

The company pulled turkeys from its four Tucson stores Wednesday after being notified by police of the call.

The supermarket chain offered refunds or exchanges to customers who recently had purchased turkeys. No stores outside of Tucson were affected.

Ninety percent of the customers who brought turkeys to the store asked for a refund instead of another turkey, store officials said.

Samples have been taken of all the varieties of turkeys from the stores and will be tested for poison, Acton said.