NEWMARKET, N.H. (WHDH) - Police in Newmarket, New Hampshire announced an investigation Friday after reports of people feeling sick after eating ice cream at a local restaurant.
Investigators said several unrelated people who ate ice cream at Roots Local Café went to area hospitals on March 17 and 18 with symptoms including severe dizziness, weakness and exceptionally high heart rates.
One person had to stay in the hospital overnight.
Newmarket police said some of the customers tested positive for having THC — the chemical in marijuana — in their system.
Speaking on Friday, the owner of Roots Café said she was stunned to find out the root of the problem could be the ice cream she had just taken out of the freezer.
“One of our employees came in and had ice cream right away in the beginning of her shift and immediately felt awful,” café owner Amber Enright said.
The teenage employee was among those suffering serious side effects after eating ice cream at Roots Café.
“The common denominator in all of these events was that they all eaten at the same restaurant and actually had the same ice cream,” Newmarket Police Lieutenant Scott Kukesh said.
Enright said the ice cream comes from an outside vendor.
“So, we didn’t make the ice cream,” she said. “We just made the food.”
“Whatever batch of ice cream I pulled out of the freezer had THC in it,” Enright said.
Anne McCurry said her daughter brought her boss some of the ice cream, which the two of them ate.
While she said her daughter didn’t need to go to the hospital, McCurry said her daughter’s boss did.
“She said ‘I never felt like that,’” McCurry said of a conversation with her daughter. “She said it was psychedelic or something.”
“She was scared,” McCurry said.
Investigators said they’ve partnered with the FDA, adding that the three gallon tub of ice cream in this situation has been sent for testing.
“Marijuana is still technically illegal in the state,” Kukesh said. “But this goes beyond that.”
“People got really sick from something that they consumed,” Kukesh continued.
Even though everyone is now okay, McCurry said it was a different story in the moment.
“They just didn’t know what was going on,” McCurry said. “Nobody did.”
“You go get an ice cream at a place you eat at all the time and all of a sudden you’re high as a kite or whatever they were,” McCurry added.
Enright said she is now hoping the community can forgive the small business for what she called an unusual mishap.
“We just hope everyone can feel safe coming here, knowing we aren’t selling that ice cream anymore and we just are so apologetic to the victims of what happened,” Enright said.
Roots already has a new ice cream supplier.
7NEWS reached out to the original supplier but had not heard back as of Friday night.
The incident remained under investigation.
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