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Food

Woman Allegedly Carried Glass Shards in Her Purse So She Could Get Free Meals

At one restaurant, after the woman claimed that she found glass in her chicken, workers threw out $100 worth of wings due to safety concerns.
Photo via Flickr user vialbost

Any time a news headline contains the words "Florida woman," it's a safe bet that you might need to buckle your seatbelt and get ready for whatever insanity rounds out the rest of the sentence. This particular Florida woman is Kaitlyn Murphy, who is facing felony charges for allegedly putting pieces of broken glass in her meals from ten different restaurants in order to score free food.

During a two-week stretch in September, Murphy visited at least ten—if not more—different eateries in Delray Beach, and on each occasion, she complained of finding a piece of glass in her entree. In every case, her meal was comped, and the managers sometimes even gave her gift cards as additional compensation.

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Her scam also led to panic among the managers and employees at the restaurants she accused of seasoning their food with glass shards. At Anthony Coal Fire Pizza, the staff was confused as to where the glass came from, because there is no glass at all in their food prep area, and the glass shaker on the table—which was filled with Romano cheese—wasn't broken. At Bono's B-B-Q and Grill, workers had to trash $100 worth of wings because they were worried that they were dangerous. Other restaurant managers were equally perplexed after speaking to the then-unidentified woman.

READ MORE: Restaurant Shames Woman Caught Putting Her Own Hair in Her Food

Murphy was caught after Carra Crehan, a manager at Carmela's Brick Oven Pizza, wrote about the incident on Facebook. Murphy allegedly told the staff at Carmela's that she'd cut her mouth on glass that was in her chicken meal. "I figured putting it on Facebook would be able to keep someone else from going through something crazy like what we went through," Crehan told NBC26.

She was right. Another restaurant manager had a similar story, involving a woman of the same description. The Stuart Police Department shared a surveillance photo of Murphy on its own Facebook page, and she was identified by an employee at Artesian Transitional Housing, a sober living facility.

READ MORE: The Curious Story of a Drunken Hotel Orgy that Ended with Food Poisoning

Murphy was swiftly arrested, and told police officers that she carried the shards of glass in her purse. She also allegedly said that she got the idea from a friend she'd met in rehab. Regardless of what prompted her to scam a dozen free meals, several managers said that they would've given her free food if she'd just asked.

"We would have given her a free slice of pizza in a second," Crehan said. And all of those wings wouldn't have gone to waste. Sigh.