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Body Part Allegedly Found In Potency Punch

Drink Manufactured In New Kensington

POSTED: 3:15 pm EDT October 1, 2001
UPDATED: 7:07 pm EDT October 1, 2001

A Colorado man said that he was drinking a fruit punch called Ora when he found a male body part inside, police reported.

potency drink

Juan Sanchez-Marchez told police in the Denver suburb of Commerce City that he drank almost the entire bottle of Ora Potency Fruit Punch when he made the gruesome discovery.

"The pathologist told us they do believe it is a 3-inch section of a human penis that is intact," Commerce City Police spokeswoman Elaine Rowe said.

Vancol Industries Inc. is the Denver company that distributes the Ora fruit drinks.

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The energy drinks are manufactured by Three Rivers Bottling of New Kensington, Pa.

In a statement released Monday, Three Rivers Bottling general manager Tom Petro said:

"It's unbelievable. I'm convinded 100 percent the bottle wasn't tampered with here or at any other bottling company.

"There's no way it could have entered the bottle. Bottles here are rinsed and washed upside down.

"Any contaminants would have fallen out. They are then vusially inspected by at least eight people."

The company vice president is convinced that the body part was put into the bottle after it was shipped to Colorado, partly because the production date was a year ago and there are no preservatives in the drink.

"I don't see where our product would be able to preserve an object like that without some decomposition," Vancol's VP Chris Terranova said.

Sanchez-Marchez said that he bought several of the drinks at a grocery store in Commerce City. He drank that particular bottle on Thursday at a construction site, where he works with his son and several other men.

"I think somebody try to play a joke on me, it was not a joke," Sanchez-Marchez said.

"The tissue presented to the coroner's office resembles a human penis but has not been positively identified as such. At this time we are performing forensic testing to verify, if possible, whether or not it is human tissue and a definition of what it may be," Adams County Coroner Rick Amend said.

The results of this testing should be available by the end of this week, Amend added.

In the meantime, Sanchez-Marchez is anxiously waiting the results of his blood tests.

"It scares me, because I don't know if that thing was infected or something, and I'm worried about my dad," Sanchez-Marchez's son Emmanuel said.

Additional wording on the bottle was, "Nutritional Supplement Beverage" and "Yohimbe Valarian Root, Ginkgo Biloba."

Commerce City police are investigating it as a tampering case but think it could lead to something much more serious like a murder, affiliate Web site TheDenverChannel.com reported.

They're already checking on any possible connection to two other cases in Adams county. A severed head and a severed foot were found in two separate locations this past summer.

In the meantime, the police said that they thought it would be a good idea to alert the public about the incident. The distribution company has taken the precaution of pulling the drinks from shelves.

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