02 November 2023 , 11:11
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A parent made a horrifying discovery after biting into their kid's Halloween candy to find a sewing needle.
Cops were dispatched to the Silver Spring Township neighbourhood in Pennsylvania at around 7pm on Tuesday, and have since learned of two further identical instances during the night's festivities. Authorities say one of the needles was discovered after an adult took a bite of a sweet treat they found on the ground, but thankfully they were unharmed.
Local Police Chief Chris Raubenstine says his team are now investigating whether the dangerous candy was dropped accidentally or intentionally. The force has now advised all parents in the Cumberland County vicinity to check their children's candy before they eat them.
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Chief Raubenstine told WHTM: "We don’t know if it fell, or if it was placed there intentionally with the hopes that somebody would pick it up. We all hear about these things every year, but this is, in my 30 years, the first time that we’ve ever actually had it occur." Back in 2021, sewing needles were similarly found in two pieces of KitKat in Fostoria, Ohio.
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The horrible trick measured 1.5 inches in length (Silver Spring Township Police Department)
Authorities were made aware of two similar instances in the neighbourhood (Silver Spring Township Police Department)At the time, local Police Chief Keith Loreno told local news station WTVG: "Although we only are aware of two pieces of candy being involved, we take this seriously and are appalled that anyone would be so demented as to want to hurt children in our community." A community hospital subsequently offered an X-ray service for chocolate bars to put worried parents' minds at ease.
And it prompted University of Delaware professor Joel Best - who has been tracking tampered Halloween sweets since 1958 - to try to calm concerned families. "I can find no evidence that any child has ever been killed or seriously injured by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating," he told CNN.
"While reports of contaminated treats do occur, I know of only two efforts to try and investigate reports of contaminated treats; both concluded that most were hoaxes." Over in the UK, a schoolboy was shocked to discover in 2017 a two-inch needle hidden inside a Halloween Mars bar his brother had obtained from trick-or-treating.
The unnamed youngster, who was 12 at the time, made the grim discovery when he unwrapped the chocolate before reporting the find to bus driver, Tony Steel, on his way to school. Tony later warned on Facebook: "I've never seen anything like this, I just hope and pray that this hasn't happened anywhere else, it was obviously some kind of sick, twisted prank.
"I'm not shaken up or anything but I called the police right away so that they could warn other parents of children who had been trick-or-treating. I told the boy to call his parents and tell them to warn their younger son, but you know how kids are, he wasn't bothered at all. His friend wanted to keep the needle and I was saying that he absolutely had to give it to me at once, you never know what could have been on there."