Last month, I posted about a woman who reportedly found a fingertip in a spoonful of chili at a Wendy's in San Jose, California. Now, Anna Ayala has surprisingly dropped her claim against the restaurant because, her attorney says, it "has caused her great emotional distress and continues to be difficult emotionally." Wendy's has offered a bounty of $50,000 to the first person who can positively identify the source of the finger. From the Associated Press:
Wendy's maintains the finger did not enter the food chain in its ingredients. None of the employees at the San Jose store had lost any fingers, and no suppliers of Wendy's ingredients reported any hand or finger injuries, the company said.
The Santa Clara County coroner's office used a partial fingerprint to search for a match in an electronic database but came up empty. DNA testing is still being conducted on the finger.
UPDATE: Thanks to the BB readers who pointed to reports that finger-finder Anna Ayala has a suspiciously litigious past and that last week police searched her home.
UPDATE #2: Adding to the oddity of the case, Carlo Longino points out that police are investigating a possible connection between the finger food and a woman who recently lost a digit when her pet cheetah attacked. According to the Associated Press, the woman was given her finger back last saw her finger in a bag of ice after doctors were unable to reattach it. Link
UPDATE #3: Apparently the finger food is unlikely to have once belonged to the woman with the pet cheetah. The found finger was longer than the lost finger. Link
