Bus bunch lunch bust
By Staff Reports
Mar 15, 1989
EUGENE, Ore. (AP) - A state trooper responding to a mother's
urgent plea stopped a school bus and confiscated grapes
from an 11-year-old girl and several other children.
Sally Johnson and more than 50 other choir members from
Pleasant Valley School in a Portland suburb were traveling
toward Eugene for a music festival Tuesday when Trooper
Rod Beach pulled the bus over.
Beach climbed on and wanted to know if a Sally Johnson was
aboard.
Sally nervously identified herself. "Can I have your lunch?"
asked the no-nonsense trooper.
Beach said the grapes Sally had cajoled her mother into
buying the previous night could be contaminated by cyanide.
"What's going to happen to me?" asked Sally. "Am I going
to be arrested?"
Beach took Sally's contraband into custody, and several
other students also surrendered grapes.
Sally's mother, Catherine, had not heard the federal warning
about contaminated Chilean grapes until after she had put
Sally on the bus. When she heard the news, she called state
police.
"I tried to get her to buy a banana," she said later.
