Attention!: Another Finger

[LKPike]

Man Finds Piece of Severed Finger in Frozen Custard

Wilmington, N.C. -

A man who ordered a pint of frozen chocolate custard in a dessert shop got a nasty surprise inside - a piece of severed finger lost by an employee in a workplace accident.

Unlike a recent incident at a Wendy's restaurant in California, no questions have been raised about the truthfulness of the claim of the finger served up at Kohl's Frozen Custard.

Officials from the state departments of agriculture and labor went to the shop to investigate yesterday, and the shop's owner confirmed that one of his employees had lost part of a finger in an accident with a food processing machine. What was not immediatly clear was how the severed finger got into the custard.

WWAY-TV in Wilmington reported that Clarence Stowers found the finger in a pint of chocolate frozen custard he purchased at Kohl's on Sunday night.

Stowers said, "I thought it was candy because they put candy in your ice cream or whatever to make it a treat or whatever. So I said, "OK, well, I'll just put it in my mouth and get the ice cream off of it and see what it is."

"So I proceeded to put the object in my mouth, got all the ice cream off of it and spit it in my hand. So, I came here into the kitchen and rinsed it off with water and realized it was a human finger and I just started screaming."

Stowers told the TV station he was contacting a lawyer.


Story can be found here:www.tennessean.com

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2003 - Year of the Ram.
2004 - Year of the Monkey.
2005 - Year of the Finger.

[slick]

I can just see it now.....

007 new movie for 2005 - Cold Finger. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

[smokey the elder]

What IS it with fingers in people's food this spring??

[Lacey]

Oh, you know how it is... Warm weather, frozen custard... Just steal a quick taste - who's gonna know? And then whammo! You get fingered!

[IRescue452]

What is this?! I'm gonna be to traumatized to eat soon what with all the food striking back and giving consumers the finger!

[Vette]

2005 - Year of the Finger.

LOL i had to laugh at that

lord whats going on anyawy?
what are the 'really' feeding us.. starting to make me wonder...

[moosmom]

Are ya sure it isn't Michael Jackson's nose?? I've heard it's fallen off in the past. Ya never know! Sort of "cutting off his nose to spite his ugly @$$ face"

Badump bump!

[LKPike]

@moosmom

I heard his "nose" is actually fake ((I don't know the word, prosthetic? I dont know)) and that his actual "nose" looks like that of a mummy... sorta just a hole in the face

I'd love to see what he looks like in prison with no makeup crew or anything. Maybe he'll even go through some plastic surgery withdraw if his sentence is long enough?? Now thatd be interesting.

[RICHARD]

THat's what you get for eating with your fingers.

[wolflady]

Originally posted by slick
I can just see it now.....

007 new movie for 2005 - Cold Finger. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

LOL LOL LOL

Gosh, there's something fishy about this story, but I just can't put my finger on it... Who's pointing fingers now? When I first read the title of this thread, I thought...how can a digit get into frozen custard? It's definitely NOT finger food!

[lizbud]

The guy who found the finger refused to give it back to it could
be re attached. He needed it for his lawsuit. Geeze.


Customer Who Found Finger Refused To Return It To Be Reattached
Digits Can Usually Be Reattached Within Six Hours

POSTED: 5:44 am EST May 6, 2005

RALEIGH, N.C. -- To a dessert shop customer, the severed fingertip found in a pint of frozen custard could be worth big dollars in a potential lawsuit. To the shop worker who lost it, the value is far more than monetary.

But Clarence Stowers still has the digit, refusing to return the evidence so it could be reattached. And now it's too late for doctors to do anything for 23-year-old Brandon Fizer.

"I'm not saying who has it, but somebody has it," Stowers said this week in a telephone interview, refusing to let on where the fingertip is now.

Soon after Stowers found the finger in a mouthful of chocolate soft-serve he bought Sunday at Kohl's Frozen Custard in Wilmington, he put it in his freezer at home, taking it out only occasionally to show to television cameras.

He refused to give it to the shop's owner, and refused to give it to a doctor who was treating Fizer, who accidentally stuck his hand in a mixing machine and had his right index finger lopped off at the first knuckle.

Medical experts say an attempt to reattach a severed finger can generally be made within six hours.

But according to the shop's management, Stowers wouldn't give it back when he was in the store 30 minutes after the accident.

"The general manager attempted to retrieve it and rush it to the hospital," reads a statement posted Thursday on Kohl's Web site. "Unfortunately, the customer refused to give it to her and declared that he would be calling the TV stations and an attorney as he exited the store."

Officials at Cape Fear Hospital said their efforts to retrieve the finger also failed.

Dr. James Larson, director of emergency medicine for UNC Hospitals, who was not involved in the case, said once Stowers took the finger home and froze it, it was too late to even try for reattachment.

"You can't freeze it. It kills the cells," Larson said.

The doctor said the best way to preserve a severed limb is to wrap it in saline-soaked gauze, place it in a plastic bag and store that in ice water.

Stowers' attorney, Lee Andrews of Greensboro, wouldn't say if a lawsuit against Kohl's is planned, saying he needed "to get some more facts."

But Andrews said his client is concerned about possible disease in the fingertip and kept it because he wanted someone to test it for "all the diseases that are out here now."

"He's upset to the point that he's been debilitated to some degree," Andrews said. "Emotionally, it's been very upsetting to him."

Even if Stowers decides to sue, an expert in medical law said the fingertip could easily have been returned while preserving the evidence.

"The man who lost the finger has the superior claim," said Paul Lombardo, who teaches at the University of Virginia's law school. "It's his finger and he might be able to use it."

Lombardo said Stowers could have photographed the fingertip, taken a bit of flesh for DNA analysis or gotten an affidavit from the surgeon who would have reattached the digit.

"There is nothing that would prevent preserving the chain of evidence," Lombardo said.

Fizer is dealing with his loss in private. The Carolina Beach resident's mother, Sheri Fizer, said the family had been instructed by an attorney not to talk about the case.

Public opinion seemed to be running against Stowers.

"It's a mystery how that customer can live with himself after he refused to return the finger so that doctors might try to reattach it," said an editorial Thursday by the Star-News of Wilmington.

"Unless he offers a better explanation for that decision, people will assume that customer Clarence Stowers cared less about another person's loss of a body part than about his chance to squeeze some bucks out of the custard stand."

The case came not long after a Las Vegas woman made headlines with a claim that she found a finger tip in a bowl of chili at a Wendy's restaurant in San Jose, Calif. Investigators have called her claim a hoax and charged her in connection with millions of dollars in losses to Wendy's in northern California. The woman denies it was a hoax.

For Kohl's, Sunday's fingertip amputation was the second time in less than a year that a worker lost a finger on the same frozen custard machine. The worker was found by investigators to have been negligent in the July 2004 incident, and the state Labor Department cleared the company of wrongdoing.

[RICHARD]

Originally posted by lizbud
He refused to give it to the shop's owner, and refused to give it to a doctor who was treating Fizer, who accidentally stuck his hand in a mixing machine and had his right index finger lopped off at the first knuckle.

----------------------------------


"You can't freeze it. It kills the cells," Larson said.

Adding insult to injury, He already bit the hand that tried to feed him...


Freezing the finger kills the cells????

How does the rest of the hand feel?

[moosmom]

This guy better hope he wins alot of money in his lawsuit. If I were the finger's rightful owner, I'd sue the pants off him for not allowing it to be re-attached.

What a jerk!

[LKPike]

Originally posted by moosmom
This guy better hope he wins alot of money in his lawsuit. If I were the finger's rightful owner, I'd sue the pants off him for not allowing it to be re-attached.

What a jerk!

I agree, a picture/video/police report of the finger would do enough in court.

[RICHARD]

I wonder what the long arm of the law says about a hand sans a finger tip...