14 DAY TRIAL // Chili finger lady Anna Ayala has been charged with being an accessory in a crime, as well as filing a false police report.
Ayala gained notoriety when she pretended to find a severed human finger in her fast-food chili bowl. According to Wikinews, the incident occurred in 2005, at a Wendy's in San Jose.
Investigators concluded that the finger was placed in the bowl as a hoax. A background check on Ayala revealed that she had filed a total of 13 settlement suits in California and Nevada.
She served four years in prison for the crime, and is now facing another four for helping her son lie to the police, Mercury News reports.
Her son, Guadalupe “Junior” Reyes accidentally shot himself in the foot and covered up the accident by claiming to have been attacked.
As he has previously been convicted on burglary charges, he is not allowed to own a gun and has made up a story about two men assaulting him.
Ayala gave a detailed description of the men, which helped them get a match on one of the suspects. After interrogation she changed her story, as did her son, until they finally came clean.
“I don't know if it was someone she knew who she described or how she came up with the description,” Santa Clara County prosecutor Bret Wasley says.
“She backed off from her statements. [...] Junior changed his story into something unbelievable about him chasing after a dog,” he adds.
Ayala also got rid of the gun used by her son, giving it back to the friend it belonged to. She originally claimed she threw away the weapon.
“I told Reyes that shooting yourself in the foot is not a crime, it's an accident, but making a false report is a crime,” San Jose police Detective Nathaniel Braxton explains.