South Lake Tahoe food tampering suspect faces additional felony charges

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - The South Lake Tahoe man arrested on November 22, 2016 in connection with a food tampering case at the Stateline area Raley's has been charged with two more felony counts.

On Monday, November 29, the El Dorado County District Attorney’s office added the an additional charges of food tampering against Dally. This increased Dally’s bail amount. One of the two newly added counts stems from a second crime at Raley’s, the other from the Baja Fresh restaurant which sickened a 12-year-old South Lake Tahoe boy.

There still may be other charges added after the investigation by the South Lake Tahoe Police Department (SLTPD) is completed. A female visitor at Baja Fresh had returned home to San Diego where she was hospitalized with symptoms similar to food poisoning.

Harry Dally, 43, remains in the El Dorado County Jail on $307,500 bail. Besides the three felony counts he is charged with a misdemeanor violation of probation.

Lt. Brian Williams of the SLTPD said the California Department of Public Health has possession of the food samples they collected in each of these cases and have them in their Richmond, Calif., laboratory.

"We are still awaiting results from their analysis," said Williams. "Part of the delay here is due to a need for the lab to actually develop a test for the substance we suspect was criminally distributed onto the food in South Lake Tahoe."

Labs such as the one in Richmond routinely test for things such as botulism, salmonella and other commonly suspected sources of food contamination.

"It is not because the contaminant we suspect is necessarily uncommon in terms of general purpose among the public, nevertheless it is still a substance which would not be considered a typical or naturally occurring food contaminant," said Williams.

As of Tuesday afternoon there was no estimation of time to receive their analysis.

Williams said the investigation has been very time and labor intensive since days of video at a few locations had to be reviewed.