Woman Says Bad Brew Landed Her In The Hospital

Thursday, May 3rd 2007, 10:20 am

By: News On 6

A Sand Springs woman says she went to a local QuikTrip for some tea, and the drink sent her to the emergency room. The woman says it turns out the tea was cleaning solution. Lisa Demoss says one sip of what should have been tea caused her to vomit repeatedly. She says the store clerk told her water would fix it. When it didn't, she went looking for help, but News On 6 anchor Latoya Silmon reports now, she says she has no way to pay for it.

As a receptionist, Demoss talks a lot, but she says what happened at QuikTrip forced her out of work for weeks.

â€œI wasn't paying a lot of attention to it,â€ said Demoss. â€œIt had a brown color to it.â€

Demoss says her tea was actually urn cleaner. QuickTrip says it uses it to clean its machines, but Demoss says after drinking it, she started vomiting.

â€œThe gentleman at QuikTrip acted like it was no big deal and to just keep drinking water and everything would be okay,â€ said Demoss. â€œSo I thought it couldn't be anything that bad.â€

But when she could hardly talk the next day, she went to the ER then to a specialist who said she had chemically induced laryngitis.

â€œI felt like my throat was on fire,â€ said Demoss.

She says QuikTrip gave her an incident report but didn't offer much help.

â€œWe gather all the facts we can so we can immediately start taking care of the situation and start taking care of the customer, but we didn't hear that,â€ said Mike Thornbrugh of QuikTrip public affairs. The first thing we heard was from an attorney.â€

Now Thornbrugh says he can't say much about the case because attorneys are involved, but the company is investigating the matter. In the meantime, he says customers have nothing to worry about.

â€œPeople should not be afraid of QuikTrip whatsoever,â€ said Thornbrugh. â€œWe're going to do the right thing, always have, always will.â€

Demossâ€™ lawyer says so far Quik Trip has refused to pay for her medical bills. They're up to $5,000 now. No lawsuits have been filed in the case.

Watch the video: Cleaning Solution Left In Tea Machine Sends Woman To The Hospital