De Soto Parish Sheriff's Office shares 'poison napkin' warning
DE SOTO PARISH, La. (KTAL/KMSS) (KLFY) — Houston hair salon owner Erin Mims was celebrating her birthday dinner with her husband when a napkin she found stuck in her car door changed the entire course of her special day.
In a social media post, Erin Mims says as they were leaving the restaurant she found the napkin stuck in the passenger door handle.
Mims says she touched the napkin as she threw it away then went back into the eatery and washed her hands.
" I thought my husband put it in the door, just playing around."
Minutes later, she said, she felt a tingling sensation in the fingertips and immediately knew something was wrong.
"Be careful," she warned. "Be careful when you are out and pay attention to your surroundings."
After sharing her story, which has since gone viral, a Louisiana Sheriff's Office has issued a warning.
The De Soto Parish Sheriff's Office is reminding citizens to stay informed and stay safe in the wake of a disturbing story out of Houston, Texas in which a woman was reportedly poisoned by a napkin tucked into the door handle of her car.
"We have not received any similar reports of the story below in or around our parish, however Houston, TX is not that far away. So we do want to inform residents of DeSoto Parish, to be proactive," the sheriff's office said in a Facebook post on Monday afternoon.
In the Houston case, the woman did not think much of the napkin and simply threw it away before opening her car door. Within minutes, she felt a tingling in her fingertips that spread to her arms, followed by numbness, lightheadedness, and trouble breathing. She ended up in the ER, where doctors confirmed acute poisoning but were unable to pinpoint the substance.
While some news outlets are reporting that other residents have seen a napkin or tissue in their car door handle, DPSO says there are no other reports of poisoning that they could find.
"We have seen many reports over the years where a foreign object was placed on a vehicle. This has sometimes been attributed to an attempted kidnapping, or it could be nothing at all. In this woman's case, doctors believed this may have been a failed kidnapping attempt, but no one really knows."
Still, DPSO says it's worth taking precautions.
"We share this with you so that you are simply aware. If you are out and about and experience anything on your vehicle that had not been there before, do not remove it with your bare hand. Use caution. We would rather inform you now than be the next agency posting a press release after the fact."