Drugs found in food hamper

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This article was published 08/11/2024 (417 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Staff members at Samaritan House Ministries are on alert and following new procedures after drugs were found in a box of chocolates in a food hamper on Wednesday.

The discovery was immediately reported to police, says Heather Symbalisty, the non-profit’s incoming executive director.

“It’s shocking, and not a good thing to happen,” Symbalisty said. “We are so very grateful that no one was hurt — and that it was an adult who found it, and not a child.”

Two baggies of drugs were found inside a box of Toffifee chocolates. They were sitting on top of a cellophane wrapper that protects the candy.

The recipient of the food hamper made the discovery when they slid the box open.

One baggie had approximately one gram of cannabis, and the other had one gram of methamphetamine, said Janet Reichert, recruitment and communications specialist with the Brandon Police Service.

“Something as serious as meth, because it’s highly addictive, is not something that we want in the hands of children or the unsuspecting public at all,” Reichert said.

“It wasn’t as if they were tampering with the food, the cellophane on top was intact,” she added. “The drugs were stuffed between the chocolates and the box.”

Symbalisty said it would be “really, really difficult” to figure out where the donation would have come from. In the last few days, Samaritan House has had many donations brought in from “many different events in the community.”

The hamper was picked up from the food bank Tuesday, Symbalisty said, and on Wednesday, “when they went to consume the Toffifee, unfortunately, that is not what they discovered.” No other items in the hamper were affected, she added.

At first, the food hamper client called RCMP, who then contacted BPS.

Early Thursday morning, Const. Justin Artibise and Blink the German Shepard BPS’s Canine Unit were sent to the food bank.

Blink has served with BPS since the spring of 2021. She is trained to detect drugs and locate non-criminal individuals such as missing children, the elderly or other vulnerable persons.

Artibise and Blink conducted what is called a “free air search,” said Reichert.

“All the hampers were taken off the shelf and opened up, and then Blink went to work and did her sniffing,” Reichert said, “Blink was looking for further drugs, but none were found.”

So now, Symbalisty added, staff will be following new procedures while receiving donations and putting the approximately 1,300 weekly hampers together.

“We’re doing everything we possibly can to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” she said, adding, “We’re going to implement a few extra steps for staff to make sure they are aware of items’ packaging,” said Symbalisty.

“Anything that looks like it’s been tampered with, they’ll bring it to the executives’ attention, and we will examine it further, just to make sure that it’s safe. If we deem it unsafe, we’ll just dispose of it. We don’t want anyone to get hurt,” she said.

Symbalisty said to her knowledge, an incident like this “never happened before,” at Samaritan House.

“We’ve never had any reason to be suspicious in the past, so it’s never been on our radar but we’re doing all we can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Symbalisty is Samaritan House’s executive assistant, but in mid-December she will be taking over as executive director, for the retiring Barbara McNish.

“We’re going to learn from this and move forward. It gives us an opportunity to assess how we do things here in our warehouse and how we handle the donations from the community,” Symbalisty said.

While BPS continues to investigate the origin of the drugs, it reminded the public to check all donated food, and if any illicit drugs are found to contact police at 204-729-2345.

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