Officials probe
bottled drink
contamination

By Harold Morse
Star-Bulletin

A Sunday night incident in which a Kaneohe boy ingested an alkali substance in a bottle of iced tea has government agencies at city, state and federal levels looking into it.

The boy went to Kapiolani Hospital for Women and Children. "They had to take him to surgery to put him to sleep," in order to perform an endoscopic inspection of the esophagus, said Paula Bennett of her son Kekoa, age 6.

"At this point, there are three agencies involved," said the state Health Department's Patrick Johnston. Since it's a possible product tampering case, the FBI has become the lead agency, he said. "At this point it looks like an isolated incident," Johnston said. "It doesn't appear that the child was seriously injured by the product or the contamination."

Kenneth Kwak, owner of Kaneohe Market, where the mother said she bought the product, said police and a health department representative came to his store yesterday morning and took the left-over bottles of the product. It's is no longer is on sale at his store, Kwak said.

Bennett said she purchased two bottles of iced tea along with some other items.

"We came home.... I gave my son one of the teas, and I had one of the teas."

Bennett said her iced tea was all right, but when she tried her son's iced tea after he complained about the taste, "I spit it out immediately. It was awful." There was a burning sensation, and she noticed a strong odor.

Later testing at the hospital revealed the tea had a "high level of alkali," Bennett said.

The boy was able to return home from Kapiolani early Monday morning, a few hours after he ingested the substance, his mother said.