5-Year-Old Allegedly Swallows Metal Wire During Meal; Hawker Reportedly Dismisses Complaint

A Punggol hawker centre stall allegedly served up some extra ingredients in their white bee hoon.

Bonus food for the same price? Satisfactory!

Unfortunately, it was of the inedible metallic variety.

Metal Wire Lodges in Throat of 5-Year-Old

According to Shin Min Daily News, Ms Zhou had a nice family dinner with her ex-husband and two sons on 14 July.

They ordered a plate of seafood white bee hoon. Everything seemed fine until their five-year-old son, on his second bowl, suddenly said, “It hurts inside.”

In this case, he meant pain and not the crushing depression of existential dread.

After some scratching didn’t solve the issue, Ms Zhou tilted her son’s head back to check.

She was horrified when she allegedly found a small steel wire stuck in his throat. Quite possibly the worst thing to find in a throat besides maybe a knife.

Hurriedly, she dug the metal wire out of his throat with her fingers.

Ms Zhou said the wire was about a centimetre long but claimed to have forgotten to snap a photo in the hurry.

Hawker Shows Harsh Attitude Against Metal Wire Complaint

Her ex-husband confronted the hawker at once about the metal wire, only for her to reply with “You’re telling me about this, what do you want me to do about it?”

Angry at the hawker’s bad attitude, they left and said they wouldn’t patronise the stall again.

Ms Zhou was thankful that her son did not swallow the wire, but worried about similar situations potentially happening with other customers.

She felt that the hawker should have apologised for the metal wire in the food or shown concern to her son as well.

Shin Min interviewed the hawker on 15 July. She admitted to asking what they wanted her to do about it, but that the Zhou family left before she could explain anything.

Uncharacteristically for these kinds of stories, the hawker admitted her mistake.

She attributed her attitude to the situation occurring during peak dining hours, resulting in a harsher tone.

“We may have been busy and didn’t pay him much attention, but we definitely did not ignore the other party.”

As for where the wire came from, the vendor said that the stall’s staff cleaned pots after each dish using a steel wool sponge or scourer.

“We will be more careful in the future.”

The hawker also offered a refund to Ms Zhou, but she replied that what she minded was the stall’s hospitality and not the money.

Swallowed Metal Can Result in Puncturing of Organs

It’s indeed lucky she got the wire out of her son’s throat at that time.

Swallowing metal can result in them cutting or puncturing your insides, potentially resulting in an infection.

They require a trip to the hospital to extract.

A similar wire was found baked into a piece of bread in 2019, with the affected also rejecting a refund.

If you’re “lucky”, you can avoid that and find a dead snake’s head in your salad instead.