INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

KFC Chicken Eating Contest Cancelled After Entrant Chokes To Death

By Anne Sewell
Published on: 00:46 PST, Mar 21, 2016

The “Eat or Treat” chicken eating contest held at a branch of KFC Indonesia was cancelled after a 45-year-old man choked to death on his last chicken wing.

Reportedly Fredy Jayadi was one of three contestants in the elimination round held at KFC Taman Semanan at Duri Kosambo in Indonesia, where he was hoping to head to the finals to win the $1bn rupiah ($7,602) prize money. He was attempting to gobble down three chicken wings in under five minutes and had just finished his final piece of chicken when he started to choke.

After Jayadi was unable to dislodge the chicken piece by drinking water, the 45-year-old man was immediately taken to a nearby clinic, where he reportedly passed away.

The Daily Mail quotes the Jakarta Post as saying the “Eat or Treat” contest was organized by O2 Accion, working together with the fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken, and was held at KFC Taman Semanan at Duri Kosambo in West Jakarta on March 11.

In a press statement, O2 Accion said they were “incredibly saddened” over the death of Jayadi at the “Eat or Treat” event, saying the event had been initiated and was fully supported and managed by that company. They said the incident was purely accidental.

“Hence, we hold ourselves (and not any other parties) responsible towards such an unforeseen event, including any further issues arising out of this incident.”

The statement added that O2 Accion are fully supporting the Jayadi family in their loss and are also actively cooperating with inquiries from the local authorities. At the time of the incident, O2 Accion decided to completely halt the contest and participants who had registered and paid for the event will reportedly be fully refunded.

O2 Accion chief programming officer Budi Raharja Sulaiman stressed that their company was fully responsible for the event and had approached KFC as the venue. The chicken fast food chain was listed as a “supporter” in the O2 Accion’s promotion Twitter account #Menang5Miliar (which means #win5billion).

Sulaiman also stressed that before the “Eat or Treat” contest began, all participants had signed a letter declaring they were healthy.

As reported by the International Business Times, Abdul Wahab, Public Relations Officer for KFC Indonesia, confirmed in a statement that the company merely provided the venue and that was the deal they had with O2 Accion, the organizer of the event.

Reportedly, the “Eat or Treat” contests are held simultaneously at 239 KFC outlets across Java and Bali in Indonesia and are based on the elimination model, with a grand final scheduled to be held in July this year. Whoever got that far and won in the final would walk away with the top prize of 5bn rupiah ($7,602).

In other news relating to KFC, the Inquisitr recently reported that a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet manager in Richmond, Virginia, was recently fired from his job after it was found he had discriminated against a transgender female worker at the restaurant.

The report said that the worker was not to be hired after the manager found out about the fact from the worker’s driver’s license, which listed the transgender worker as male. Reportedly, the KFC manager told the worker that he couldn’t employ her, as he didn’t know which bathroom she would use.

[Photo via Flickr by Alpha | cropped and resized | CC BY-SA 2.0]

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