A United States woman who claimed she found part of a human finger in her fast-food meal has been arrested, police said on Friday, as the digital mystery took a dramatic new turn.
Anna Ayala (39) was arrested at her home in the desert gambling town of Las Vegas late on Thursday, officers said.
”We can confirm that she was arrested in Las Vegas in connection with the finger incident,” said Enrique Garcia, spokesperson for police in the California town of San Jose, the site of the restaurant where Ayala claimed to have found the fingertip last month.
The suspect, arrested on a warrant for San Jose police, has been charged with grand theft and attempted grand theft, documents showed.
But Garcia said police would not release any further details of how they nabbed Ayala or reveal whose fingertip it was until a press conference scheduled for later on Friday.
Ayala told police she was sickened when she bit into a 3,8cm-long piece of finger — complete with nail — while tucking into a bowl of chilli at a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant on March 22.
The Wendy’s restaurant chain — which initially offered a $50 000 reward for tips leading to the person who lost the fingertip and then doubled the reward last week — breathed a huge sigh of relief on Friday.
”We’re thrilled that an arrest has been made,” said Tom Mueller, president and chief operating officer of Wendy’s North America, which suffered a blaze of bad publicity and saw business plummet after news of the stray digit hit the headlines.
”We applaud the efforts of the San Jose police department and other authorities, and we’re looking forward to hearing more details” about the case, Mueller added.
Wendy’s had set up a tip hotline for anyone with information about the finger.
Police in San Jose have said that the finger mystery is one of the most bizarre and revolting cases they have investigated.
Officers were called to the restaurant after Ayala alerted staff that she had bitten into the finger. She told health officials she was so disgusted by the discovery that she began vomiting.
Police took the offending digit as evidence after an inventory of the Wendy’s staff members’ hands failed to turn up any missing fingertips.
Forensic experts began running DNA tests on the finger, while authorities looked into Ayala’s past as she filed a lawsuit against Wendy’s, which she dropped suddenly earlier this month.
Police sources said Ayala has a long history of litigation and has sued a number of corporations, sometimes settling the cases out-of-court in return for a financial payout. Ayala or her children have been involved in 13 lawsuits, they said.
The finger case took another bizarre twist last week, when a woman who keeps wild animals called police saying the finger was hers and that it had been ripped off in a leopard attack.
Sandy Allman (59), who also lives near Las Vegas, said she recognised her finger on television, but police said they could find no link between the two women. — Sapa-AFP