One Friday evening, Trevor Walker and his wife needed to grab a quick dinner for their three kids. They figured a trip to McDonald’s was most efficient, so they stopped for a meal. But by the time they got home, Trevor began to feel odd, and within minutes he was battling for his life.
Like any parent, Trevor knew the difficulties of time management when it came to children. Having three of his own, the ability to carve out time to make a home-cooked meal was especially difficult.
And late one Friday night in August, Trevor, his wife Rachaelle, and their three children, were finishing up errands in their hometown of Riverton, Utah. Too tired to cook dinner at home, they opted for a choice they knew their kids enjoyed.
After spotting the Golden Arches of McDonald’s, they knew a quick and affordable meal awaited them inside. They didn’t eat fast food often because, well, it simply wasn’t healthy, but after the long day, they treated themselves.
Happy meals were on the menu for the children, as well as a couple of chicken sandwiches for Trevor and Rachaelle. Two Diet Cokes completed the order, and off to home they went. On the way home, Trevor sipped his drink, and within minutes, something felt wrong.
He felt woozy as he walked into his house. His vision blurred, and his limbs went numb. Trying to brush it off as a passing sensation, he attempted to answer a few emails but found his fingers wouldn’t punch the right letters.
The feeling kept coming on stronger. By this time, Trevor felt as though he was about to have an extreme anxiety attack. Needing help, he texted his wife who, after eating, was working at their in-home salon.
“I am having sensation in my arms and everything is moving slowly,” Trevor texted. “I’m feeling scared. I don’t know what to do. I’m so scared I’m trying to be calm. I need you.” But when she finally made her way to the living room, she gasped.
There, on the floor, was Trevor’s unconscious body. He’d been blacked out for almost a full minute before Rachaelle got to him. Luckily, after shaking him, Trevor roused.
Rachaelle called neighbors to watch the kids while she rushed him to the hospital for tests. As soon as Trevor arrived, doctors performed a urinalysis to see if any foreign chemicals were in his body.
A sneaking suspicion told Rachaelle something in the food caused the reaction, so she phoned her neighbor to bring the leftovers. She told them not to let the kids eat anymore until they got to the bottom of the situation.
The mother began inspecting the food for anything that might indicate it was tampered with. The sandwiches and happy meals both looked fine, but when she opened the sodas, there was a white film on top of the one Trevor was drinking.
While this discovery took place, Rachaelle was informed by doctors Trevor had traces of buprenorphine, a drug used to wean people off heroin, in his blood. The drug reacted with a medication Trevor was already using. That’s when she showed doctors the soda.
The white substance in the soda cup was immediately sent to the Utah State Crime Lab after police were notified. The results proved Rachaelle’s hunch about the tainted food correct: the substance was, in fact, buprenorphine.
None of the other beverages contained the drug, so it seemed like someone slipped it into the cup just before handing it off to Trevor. Police immediately contacted the Riverton McDonald’s and asked for security footage.
McDonald’s handed over the footage, but police realized it was from a different day. When they asked the restaurant’s manager again, they were told the footage was deleted. Something fishy was clearly afoot.
Through research, police learned there was one suspected employee who had social media posts about drug usage and disrespecting customers at the Drive-Thru. They were also the manager’s younger brother, which could’ve been why the footage was deleted.
Police interrogated the siblings, but neither said anything suspicious. However, they both quit their jobs shortly after the investigation, which raised red flags. Unfortunately, without solid evidence, police couldn’t make any arrests.
Trevor saw no other recourse than to file a lawsuit against not only the McDonald’s establishment that sold him the soda but against Coca-Cola and Swire Coca-Cola (the local distributor), as well.