GRAND RAPIDS (WWJ) - A protest broke out at a West Michigan gas station Tuesday evening after a mother said she found pills among a handmade bag of candy.
Sara Chilton told FOX 17 that she had purchased the sweets on Monday, June 27, for her 5-year-old daughter from a BP gas station on Martin Luther King Jr. Street and Eastern Avenue.
When she went to give her the bag, Chilton checked the contents and found the pills.
“I see the bags all the time, but never found anything, but in every bag, I found pills," Chilton said to FOX 17. "It was like they put the candy at the bottom and they had pills in the middle and put candy on top to try and blend it in. All the bags were like that."
As word of the incident spread, protestors gathered outside the gas station Tuesday evening, locking arms and demanding action.
However, authorities said they believe the incident was accidental.
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According to a press release from the Grand Rapids police, investigators found that the gas station clerk was bagging the candy when he dropped a bottle of his prescription medication.
As the pills spilled out, some got into the bags of candy he was working on. Police said the employee — who is diabetic — thought he had picked up all the loose pills, but appeared to have missed some.
"These meds ended up in candy bags and were inadvertently sold with the candy," police explained.
Police were able to confirm the medication belonged to the clerk and matched the drug mark on the pills to the prescription listed on the bottle.
“We are thankful this mother was able to locate the misplaced medication before it was consumed by her children,” said Deputy Chief Scott Rifenberg. “This was an unfortunate incident but is believed to be accidental."
Rifenberg said they are not pursing criminal charges at this time.
Gas station owner, Tony Singh, also called the incident an accident.
He told Fox 17 that this is the first time he has heard of something like this at his gas station. His employee, who had only worked as a clerk for two months, had been fired.
Chilton said the mix-up, accidental or not, should've never occurred.
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“I don’t know what they are because anything could have been in the bottle, They were just reading the label," she said of the police investigation. "I still don’t know what they are, but no pills should be mixed up,” said Chilton.
Kent County commissioner Robert Womack was present among the protestors on Tuesday night, calling for a more thorough investigation into the matter and to find out why the gas station was bagging up and selling their own candy.
“We’re going to see if we can get the Kent County Health Department to look into why they are taking candy, mixing them and wrapping them themselves to see if they went through the inspections to be able to do that at a local gas station,” Womack said to FOX 17.
The Michigan Department of Agriculture is now conducting an investigation into the matter.