I have taken the names out of this. My son just turned eleven. Our friend mentioned in the letter is a personal friend whom we attend church with and also owns a bussiness in the area.
This is an e-mail I sent to a friend of mine who knows Russ and Dee Fine in Birmingham. I tried to resolve this privately but now I am going public with it.
XXXX,
Here are the pictures and the events that happened almost three weeks ago now. I hope you can help. I have exhausted all of my resources, the health dept., police dept, Mayor, district attorney, legal advise from friends, the media. I think that about covers it. It is not that they do not care, it is just the fact that my son spit the glass out instead of ingesting it. There is no legal recourse.

About a week before this happened, my friends had gone to eat at El Portal. My friend was joking around with the waitress and said "Everybody back there (Talking about the kitchen) got a green card?" She got very mad at him and said "You're Mean!". Our freind told me what had happened and I told him not to go back there because they might spit in his food or worse.

Well, the following Friday (July 14, 2006) My son had gone to work with his Dad. Our friend who had asked the waitress the question was there doing a job with My husband. It came time to go to lunch, my husband wasn't hungry so he told our friend and my son to go on. Our friend was driving his backhoe and didn't want to cross the highway, so they went to the closest place to eat, El Portal. When they got their food my son took a bite and felt something crunch, he spit it out into his napkin and there were three shards of glass, totaling about half the size of a dime. Our friend called the waiter over, handed him the glass and told him to send the manager over. The waiter handed the glass to the manager who then put it in a napkin laughed and threw it in the trash. He went over and talked to our friend and our friend asked him why he was laughing? He then called the Health Dept. from the table. While he was on the phone with them he noticed the Manager on the phone pacing back and forth. The man that was sitting behind our friend got up and left and the man sitting with a little girl sitting behind my son just sat there and kept eating.

My son and our friend then left and went back to tell My husband. My husband brought my son home, to tell me what had happened. I was furious!

I immediately got into the car and went to El Portal. I asked to speak with the Manager. I asked him what was so funny about glass being in my sons food. He said he had only been there 15 minutes.The men standing behind him started chuckling. I told him that I wanted to see the owner. At about that time I turned around to see a picture of Poncho Villa on the wall. This made even more mad. I asked the manager why there was a picture of a man who murdered American's on his wall, he said and I quote" I have only been here five minutes I don't know." Now I was starting to wonder if the man understood a single thing I had said before. I sat down on a bench there for about ten minutes and then I got up and said "You tell the owner I am going to file a Police Report and he could talk to them."

I went down and filed a report. The police officer said he was going to give it to the Health Dept. and there was really nothing more that he could do.

I went home called my Doctors office they said there was really nothing they could do, glass doesn't show up on the x-ray and we would have to wait and see if there was blood in his stool .I asked my son what the Manager was wearing and he described the exact shirt the gentleman was wearing that said he didn't know what I was talking about.

At 6:00 I went to El Portal 2 and took pictures of the restaurant and the cars behind the restaurant. My mom went into Walmart and we circled the parking lot until she came out.

We then at about 6:20 went up to the other El Portal where my son had been earlier that day. The same white Ford truck was at El Portal 2 was now at first El Portal. I am assuming that is the owners truck. My mom waited in the car while my son and I went in. I asked to speak with the owner, he motioned me to the corner of the restaurant. I said "No, I want to talk to you right here" He reluctantly came over. I asked him why his manager thought it was funny that there was glass in my sons food. He said he didn't. I asked him if he thought it was funny too, he said no. I asked him what he planned to do about this, he said I have insurance. Insurance? I asked him how he could shluff this off with insurance.He said " I am sorry this happened yesterday" I said," It happened today at lunch" He knew full well when it happened, yet another lie. He said "It happens all the time." All the time? I said, "Never in my thirty five years have I gotten glass in my food at a restaurant and that I believed it was no coincidence that my friend had asked if everyone in the back had their green cards and the next time he comes in there is glass in the food." Then I went on to ask him why he had a picture of Poncho Villa in his restaurant. Was he proud that he killed 112 Americans? He said "That happened a long time ago" , I said "Well, you must still think it was pretty cool." I told him I was originally from New Mexico and I found it offensive. He said he would take it down if the police told him too.By this time he was glaring at me. I felt I had said my piece and left.

Monday (July 17, 2006) morning I called the health inspector and asked him if he had gone out there yet. He said that he did Friday afternoon. I said " Darn I was hoping to catch you so you could look for any glass that was there to get into the food, because the drinking glasses were plastic the salsa bowls were metal and usually restaurants got their bulk food in big plastic jars. He said he was going back to dig a little deeper.He spoke with our friend later on in the week and said that he had given them a report on food safety. I then called an attorney friend of mine and asked him what could be done, he said, because we didn't have the glass and my son had not sustained any injury in a court of law it would be a pretty weak case. I got basically the same story from the district attorney.

It absolutely infuriates me that my son can gets fed glass and there is nothing we can do about it. It is on record at the Health Dept. though in case the next person that ingests glass from there is not so lucky. Unbelievable! When I met with the Mayor and told him about it. I am glad nothing is wrong with my son. I know it scared him to death, something he will never forget, for sure.