Police in NSW have made an arrest in relation to the needles being found in strawberries across the country, saying that a ‘young boy’ had admitted to putting needles in the fruit.
At a press conference, Acting Assistant Commissioner Stuart Smith said that the suspect had been arrested in the last few days over what “could be called a prank“.
Deliberately contaminating food in NSW can carry a penalty of up to 10 years in jail, but Smith has said that the ‘young person’ in question will be dealt with under the youth cautioning system.
Smith told reporters that they didn’t believe that the needles found in NSW were part of the original contamination: “What we’ve seen in the state we believe is the work of copycats and pranksters, we’ve got to deal with it though, the way we deal with any crime.”
