Orange County Food Blog

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According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Taco Bell agreed to pay two 16-year-old employees in Memphis a total of $350,000.

The commission said Monday that one of them was assaulted on her first day at work and the other had been raped earlier.

Officials say their supervisor, Terence E. Davis, pleaded guilty this year to rape and is serving eight years in prison.

Taco Bell has agreed to conduct training on the prevention of workplace harassment in the greater Memphis area.

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A four-door Dodge crashed through the main doors of the Central Avenue Taco Bell Friday evening, sending four people to the hospital.

According to Billings Police, no one inside the restaurant at 2338 Central was injured when the silver Stratus jumped the curb and smashed through the double entry doors on the east side of the building just after 6 p.m.

The car stopped with its front end just beyond the door frame of the restaurant, which was covered in broken glass. A Billings Police report said the 37-year-old woman driving the car was just trying to park, but lost control.

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A Charleston man charged with robbing the Patrick Street Taco Bell restaurant in January has pleaded guilty in Kanawha Circuit Court.

Brenya James Beverly, 23, told Judge Charles King that he approached manager Michael Hill from behind on Jan. 3 in an alley outside the restaurant and wrestled him to gain control. He then stole $4,300 from Hill, who was on his way to make a bank deposit.

Beverly had been an employee of the Taco Bell, said Assistant Prosecutor Rob Schulenberg.

"He told him that he had a firearm," Schulenberg said. "And the manager gave him the money."

Beverly said he did not actually have a gun.

The chain's biggest crime? Firing Dan...

An off-duty Garden Grove police officer fired shots at a car that clipped his car's open door after a late-night argument at a Del Taco drive-thru.

The driver of the car, Maurice Velonte Cooper, 21, is scheduled to be arraigned Friday on two counts of attempted murder. He is accused of trying to run over Chris Casas, an off-duty Claremont police officer who was at the Westminster Del Taco with his friend Nick Jensen.

It was Jensen, an off-duty Garden Grove police officer, who fired the shots.

Jensen and Casas were in the drive-thru at the Del Taco on the southwest corner of Goldenwest and 21st streets in Westminster a little after 1 a.m. June 3 when Jensen's Chrysler 300 was rear-ended by a Nissan Altima that Cooper was driving, according to a search warrant obtained by Westminster police.

Jensen didn't know it, but there were two empty bottles of UV Vodka in the Altima, and the young woman with Cooper had already vomited several times.

Let's hope the vomit came from the vodka, and not some Macho combo special...

A former north Fargo Taco Bell employee pleaded guilty Monday to conspiring to rob the store at gunpoint.

Michael Vincent Wanzek, 21, received a deferred sentence after entering the plea in Cass County District Court to the felony.

Wanzek was given credit for six days previously spent in custody and will serve two years of supervised probation. He must either serve an additional 24 days in jail or complete 240 hours of community service, East Central Judicial District Court Judge Steven Marquart ordered.

Wanzek has no prior convictions.

Is that a leather cap?

The male subject in the included photos is being sought for questioning in connection with a theft and use of a stolen bank card. The theft occurred on May 16, 2009 while the victim was visiting a restaurant in Bel Air.

The suspect then used the bank credit card to make purchases at the following locations: Citgo gas station on North Avenue, Baltimore; Taco Bell in Bel Air; and, the WAWA in Bel Air. In addition, several other transactions occurred at retail establishments in Baltimore County.

Hungry? You may want to think twice before you think outside the bun. Just ask George Phelps, a VA Beach man who suffered severe injuries to his throat after swallowing bones in a Mexican pizza from Taco Bell. In the lawsuit, filed in Virginia Beach Circuit Court, George E. Phelps Jr. said he "endured the vomiting of blood-streaked phlegm" after three animal bones got caught in his throat. He's seeking $70,000 in compensation for his injuries from Taco Bell of America and Yum Brands Inc.

Phelps missed work for three days, rang up medical bills, and "suffered great mental anguish," the suit says. He ordered the pizza on April 13, 2007, at Taco Bell on Fordham Drive, near Indian River and Kempsville roads. He began coughing and choking, and was able to pull one of the bones from his throat, the suit says. Doctors pulled two more from his throat at the hospital.

Rob Poetsch, a spokesman for Taco Bell, wrote in an e-mail that the safety and health of customers and employees is the restaurant's priority. The company is investigating Phelps's case. This is not the first time Taco Bell has been sued for tainted food. Last year, a Nebraska family was awarded $40,000 after eating urine-tainted food from a KFC/Taco Bell restaurant.

Paul Price, 27, of 812 SW 6th Avenue, Cape Coral (Gustavo note: is southwest Florida still so backwards that the newspapers feel comfortable in printing someone's home address? Last time the Register did that here was in the 1960s), is charged with four counts of selling marijuana, four counts of possession of marijuana over 20 grams, three counts of using a two-way communication device to facilitate a felony, one count of possession with the intent to sell or deliver and eight counts of possession of drug paraphernalia.

Discarded cigarettes cause a two-alarm blaze that destroyed a Taco Bell restaurant in Germantown on Monday, firefighters said this week.

"What the fire didn't damage, smoke and water did," said Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Services spokesman Pete Piringer.

No one was injured in the fire at 19650 Gunners Branch Road, he said, but the stucco, plywood and cinderblock building suffered approximately $250,000 in damage.

The store is closed indefinitely, said Piringer.