It's the first real indication of a motive in a bizarre crime that rocked the city of Guelph earlier this month.
As we told you on Thursday night, police have
made an arrest in a strange case that involved someone inserting 13 sewing needles inside 12 packages of a best selling line of deli meats.
The products, sold under the brand name Schneider's, are made by Maple Leaf Foods. And now police have revealed the suspect, Mastoora Qezil, used to work for the food giant.
Maple Leaf Foods issued a statement confirming that the suspect worked for the company at its Guelph plant for seven years and was fired earlier this month. They didn't say why she was let go.
None of the allegations against the 41-year-old woman have been proven in court. She's facing charges of being a common nuisance, which carries a possible penalty of two years in jail.
Police have refused to speculate on a motive for the tampering, but the revelation only adds to the company's recent woes.
Maple Leaf Foods was at the centre of a nationwide listeriosis crisis last summer that took 15 lives in Ontario and several more in other provinces. The giant corporation had just started to recover when this latest bad publicity struck.
But authorities stress this case has nothing to do with the company and appeared to be from an outside source. The packages were found in just a single No Frills outlet in the city and they were quickly removed from the shelves.
Loblaw's, which owns the franchise, searched other stores within a 25 kilometres radius of the affected facility but found no other problematic packages.
Qezil was in court on Friday and was released on very strict conditions. She'll be back before a judge on April 20th.