SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – Jan Harding and her husband had just arrived at a Utah restaurant for a relaxing lunch with friends when she filled her cup with sweet tea from a self-serve beverage station.
The 67-year-old grandmother took one sip before spitting it out and exclaiming to her husband: “I think I just drank acid.”
In fact, the tea was laced with a highly toxic industrial cleaning solution meant for degreasing deep fryers, authorities said. It contained the odorless chemical lye, the active ingredient in drain cleaners.
Four days later, Harding was in critical condition Thursday at a Salt Lake City hospital’s burn unit, unable to talk and fighting for her life, lawyer Paxton Guymon said. She hasn’t improved since Sunday, when she and her husband went to Dickey’s Barbecue Pit in South Jordan after church.
Investigators and the restaurant manager have told the Hardings that a worker mistook the cleaning product for sugar and accidentally mixed large quantities of it into the iced-tea dispenser, Guymon said.