The following is a news release issued by Samaritan House Ministries Inc.
Samaritan House Ministries Inc. wants to make the public aware that illegal drugs were found by one of our clients in a donated item from our food bank. Samaritan House Ministries Inc. is assisting with the investigation being conducted by Brandon Police Services.
Heather Symbalisty the Executive Assistant said, “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.”