The Hannaford supermarket in Saco issued a single-store recall of fresh pizza dough after someone inserted razor blades into dough sold in the deli department earlier this week, and police are looking for the person responsible.
Saco police were called to the store Tuesday, after a customer returned a pizza dough purchased at the store that contained a razor blade inside, said Saco Police Deputy Chief Corey Huntress.
Employees checked the remaining doughs in stock, and found that a small number of bags appeared to have been punctured, according to Huntress.
“While inspecting the pizza dough, a second razor blade was found in one of the pizza bags,” Huntress said. “Officers are currently conducting a follow-up investigation reviewing video surveillance footage inside the Hannaford store trying to identify a person of interest and the vehicle that they left the store in.”
Police have kept the two bags of dough taken from the store and stored it frozen in the department’s evidence room, Huntress said. He declined to release photos of the dough or razor blades.
Huntress said the department may release surveillance images associated with the case if detectives cannot locate the person of interest.
Customers who purchased fresh pizza dough at the store between Monday, Oct. 5, at 2 p.m. and Tuesday, Oct. 6, at 10 a.m. should not eat the product and may return it to the store for a full refund, according to Hannaford. No injuries or illnesses had been reported in connection with this recall, the company said.
Hannaford did not say whether it was a particular brand of dough, and the company did not provide any further information Wednesday.
It also was not clear how officials determined the bags of dough were tampered with in the store between those hours.
In a statement announcing the recall, Hannaford said the customer who returned the pizza dough is not believed to be the person responsible for inserting the razor blades, although there was no explanation of how they established that fact.
Hannaford spokeswoman Ericka Dodge said the company believes a customer “maliciously tampered with the product,” but Dodge declined to say how that fact was established, and refused to provide more details.
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