On November 6th, 2024, Brandon Police Service (BPS) says it received a report about drugs being located in a food hamper received from Samaritan House the previous day. They say the drugs, approximately 1 gram of cannabis and 1 gram of methamphetamine, were discovered in a tampered with Toffifee chocolate box.
Image – Brandon Police Service
According to police, the Toffifee box was donated to Samaritan House on an unknown date from an unknown donor and the investigation into the origin of the drugs, is continuing. Police would like to remind the public to please check all donated food and contact BPS if you locate any illicit drugs.
Samaritan House Executive Director Heather Symbalisty said in a media release, “We want to commend the individual for coming forward with this information on Wednesday afternoon. We thank them for taking the correct steps to make sure they were safe, reporting it to the authorities and informing us about their discovery. As a result, Samaritan House is working closely with Brandon Police Services regarding this serious matter. Our priority at this time is to make sure that all other donations currently in our Food Bank are safe for the public. As they have been trained, our staff and volunteers carefully inspect donations as they come in, however, we are reviewing our procedures to ensure that an incident like this one does not happen again. We suspect that these substances were stashed in the container without the donor being aware. Again, we want to thank the client for letting us know about this serious matter and we are grateful that no one was injured.”
