A seventh-grade student was charged Wednesday with placing a straight pin in the applesauce at his middle school’s cafeteria, Fairfax County police said.
Police are not releasing the child’s name because he is a juvenile. A cafeteria worker found the pin in a serving of applesauce April 24 a Rachel Carson Middle School in Herndon.
The 12-year-old has not yet been charged in connection with three other incidents where objects were found in cafeteria food at Rachel Carson.
A teacher found a pin stuck through the foil top of a yogurt container April 26, and a cafeteria worker found another pin in a serving of cranberry sauce May 4. Most recently, a student found a metal object in a chicken nugget during his lunch period Tuesday. The student did not ingest the object, which appeared to be a 1-inch piece of a paper clip. No one has suffered injuries in any of the incidents.
Fairfax County Police Officer Eddy Azcarate would not comment on whether the youth would be charged in connection with the April 26 and May 4 incidents. The child is not a suspect in the most recent case, however.
“He was not involved in the final incident,” Azcarate said. “He was accounted for. We know his whereabouts when that incident occurred.”
The boy is charged with one count of “adulteration of food,” which is a Class 3 felony under Virginia law. If prosecutors decide to try him as an adult and he is convicted, the boy could face five to 20 years in prison.
Rachel Carson Middle School has 1,140 seventh- and eighth-grade students. The school has increased the number of staff members who monitor the cafeteria food while police investigate the food-tampering incidents.
