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Prosecutors need another week to decide whether to charge employees at a South Jordan restaurant where a customer was poisoned last month by sweet tea laced with lye.
Investigators on Thursday were still gathering information in response to follow-up questions about the Aug. 10 poisoning of Jan Harding, whose mouth and esophagus were critically burned by an industrial degreasing solution that was mistaken for sugar and mixed with the iced tea at Dickey's restaurant, 689 W. South Jordan Parkway, said Salt Lake County Attorney Sim Gill.
"That pushes us to mid-week next week," Gill said Thursday. "Some information that was presented to us ... needed some clarity."
Harding, 67, was lunching at Dickey's with her husband and friends when she took a sip of her iced tea and began gagging and coughing. She was flown to University Hospital, where doctors in the burn unit had to insert a breathing tube. Six days passed before she could speak again, and she was hospitalized for almost two weeks.
Employees at Dickey's discovered that a cleaning chemical had been poured into the sugar container, police have said. The solution was 67 percent sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, the active ingredient in drain cleaner.
Police and Harding's attorney are investigating allegations that restaurant employees discovered the chemical had been mixed with the sugar weeks before it went into Harding's tea, but did not throw it out. Witnesses said an employee on July 5 told a supervisor that the sugar looked odd, so the supervisor tasted it and was hospitalized for chemical burns to her tongue.
The restaurant was closed briefly for a heath department investigation but reopened after inspectors found all ingredients and cleaning materials were appropriately labeled.