The Chicago police and the FBI are investigating if saboteurs placed maggots in a breakfast buffet served to delegates at the Democratic national convention in Chicago.
Delegates from Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Missouri and South Dakota were hit in the apparent attack at the city’s Fairmont hotel on Wednesday morning, according to local news reports.
“Multiple unknown female offenders are alleged to have entered a building … and began placing unknown objects on to tables containing food,” the convention’s information center said in a statement.
“The offenders are believed to have then left the area. One victim was treated and released on scene. Along with the [Chicago police department], FBI-Chicago is assisting in the investigation,” it added.
The unappetizing additions to the breakfast buffet selection appeared to be maggots, some reports said, but others said that they appeared to be crickets. The infestation was first reported by WGN.
Indiana delegate Karen Tallian told USA Today that as her party was coming down to breakfast at 6.45am, “there were these two women who had hidden themselves in the bathroom. And they ran out and threw maggots into the breakfast buffet.”
The Fairmont Hotel confirmed that “a group of individuals caused a disruption at a DNC-related breakfast event at our hotel this morning” and hotel staff “acted immediately to clean and sanitize the area, ensuring that the event could continue without further incident”.
Indiana state representative Carolyn Jackson said that an hour later “there was all new food out”.
Last month, maggots and other insects were heaped on to the table of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the Watergate hotel in Washington DC during a visit to the US Capitol. Some of those, too, appeared to be crickets.
The introduction of maggots – soft-bodied larvae of many dipterous flies – is the latest and perhaps least serious effort to disrupt the Democratic party’s four-day gathering and presidential promotion.
At least 67 people, including two journalists, were arrested outside the Israeli consulate in Chicago on Tuesday night during a protest for an end to the Gaza war. Chicago’s police superintendent, Larry Snelling, told reporters at the scene that his officers “did one hell of a job tonight keeping the city safe and keeping violent individuals from inflicting violence”.
On Tuesday, Chicago police and the Secret Service responded to bomb threats at the Omni Chicago hotel and two others. DNC officials said law enforcement cleared the locations, and no credible threats were found.
“We ran out every single threat yesterday and they are continuing to come in today,” deputy Secret Service special agent Derek Mayer said, according to USA Today, at a morning briefing.
