Ian Clover
Email hoaxers this week targeted McDonald's by circulating a letter in which a Midrand woman alleges her son died of a heroin overdose after being pricked with a hypodermic syringe while playing in a "ball pit" at an outlet of the fast food chain on his third birthday.
In the email, purportedly written by Lauren Archer of Midrand north of Johannesburg, Archer claims her son, Kevin, was injured on October 2 when she took him to a McDonald's for his birthday.
Archer requests that the email be forwarded to other mothers.
It has subsequently been described as a hoax by police, McDonald's and the local Midrand newspaper, the Midrand Reporter.
Midrand Reporter news editor Elmarie van Rensburg and McDonald's said they had been inundated with calls from concerned parents, but there was no truth in the story.
The Midrand McDonald's did not have a ball pit, according to McDonald's spokesperson Bev Goodman.
She said where there were ball pits, they were regularly cleaned and monitored by personnel.
In the email the writer claimed: "After he (Kevin Archer) finished lunch, I allowed him to play in the ball pit. When he started whining later on, I asked him what was wrong. He pointed to the back of his pull-up and simply said: 'Mommy, it hurts'."
The letter claimed that later, while she was bathing her child, Archer found a welt with what looked like a splinter under it. Shortly after that his eyes rolled back into his head. She claimed he was taken to hospital where he died.
The letter claimed an autopsy found the splinter to be part of a hypodermic needle and that he died of a heroin overdose.
Police were said to have found hypodermic syringes - some empty others full of heroin - in the ball pit.
North Rand police spokesperson Eugene Opperman denied this.
The email also claimed an article on the matter had appeared in the Midrand Chronicle on October 10.
However, the only Midrand paper is called the Midrand Reporter and it said it had not published any such article.
Van Rensburg said her paper had carried a story on a hypodermic syringe found in a seat in a restaurant in the Boulders on the week ending October 15. However, the syringe was empty and no-one was injured.
McDonald's issued a strong warning against scam artists who were wrongfully implicating its franchises in the email hoax.
Van Rensburg has received a similar email, apparently emanating from the United States, in which local Midrand details are replaced with information on Houston, Texas.
A McDonald's spokesperson pointed out that the email stated
"half-eaten candy, diapers, feces (sic), and the stench of urine" were found in the ball pit.
However, in normal South African parlance one would rather use words like nappies and sweets.
McDonald's said international investigators as well as legal and information technology experts were tracing the originator of the email. - Sapa