The person in a viral video shown licking an open carton of Blue Bell ice cream and putting it back in a freezer is a teenage girl from San Antonio, Lufkin police announced.
The nine-second clip, posted Saturday on Twitter, shows the suspect licking Tin Roof ice cream in a Walmart freezer aisle while someone calls her “foul” and tells her to put it back in the freezer. The suspect laughs and walks away as the door closes.
What kinda psychopathic behavior is this?! pic.twitter.com/T8AIdGpmuS
— Optimus Primal (@BlindDensetsu) June 29, 2019
Lufkin police have spoken the girl and her boyfriend, according to a statement posted on the department’s Facebook page.
“The case will be turned over to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department and remains under investigation,” police said.
The suspect, whose name was not released because she is a juvenile, is from San Antonio but has ties to the Lufkin area through her boyfriend’s family, police said.
In a statement released Monday, Brenham-based Blue Bell said it was working with “law enforcement, retail partners and social media platforms” in connection with the incident.
Tuesday, the company said it had identified a Walmart about 110 miles northeast of Houston as the location “where the malicious act of food tampering took place.”
After employees identified the store, staff located a carton of Tin Roof that “appears to have been compromised,” the company said.
“We believe we may have recovered the half gallon that was tampered with,” Blue Bell’s statement said. “Out of an abundance of caution, we have also removed all Tin Roof half gallons from that location.”
Lufkin police said they plan to turn the case over to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department for further investigation.
Tampering with consumer products, including food and drugs, is a felony offense in Texas, but the state’s penal code specifies that tampering means altering or adding something to the product “to make it probable that the consumer product will cause serious bodily injury.”
Threatening to tamper with a consumer product to affect its sale or to cause fear is a third-degree felony.
Blue Bell said in its statement that it was thankful that consumers had notified it about the video.
“The safety of our ice cream is our highest priority, and we work hard to maintain the highest level of confidence of our customers,” the company said. “Food tampering is not a joke, and we will not tolerate tampering with our products.”
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© 2019 The Dallas Morning News
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