Texas ice cream licker jailed for social media joke

Image source, Jefferson County Sheriff's Office

Image caption, D'Adrien Anderson was then seen buying the tainted ice cream

A man in Texas who filmed himself licking ice cream and putting it back in the freezer of a Walmart supermarket has been jailed for 30 days.

The video of D'Adrien Anderson, 24, was shared on social media last August.

Surveillance cameras in the shop showed he later took the ice cream back out of the freezer and bought it.

He was also given a six-month suspended sentence, 100 hours of unpaid work, a $1,000 (拢770) fine, and was ordered to pay $1,565 to the ice cream company.

The ice-cream-licking happened on 26 August in Port Arthur, about 90 miles (145km) east of Houston.

Anderson and his father later returned to the shop to show officers a receipt as proof that he had bought the tainted ice cream, US broadcaster ABC reported.

Despite this, the ice cream manufacturer Blue Bell Creameries replaced all of the ice cream in the freezer as a precaution, which cost them $1,565.

Anderson pleaded guilty earlier this year to misdemeanour criminal mischief.

In a statement released at the time of his arrest, Walmart said: "If food is tampered with, or a customer wants to leave the impression that they left behind adulterated product, we will move quickly with law enforcement to identify, apprehend and prosecute those who think this is a joke - it is not."

Anderson's ice cream stunt came a month after a very similar video, in which a teenage girl licked a tub of ice cream and put it back in the freezer at a Walmart in Lufkin, Texas.

In that case the girl, who was under 18 at the time, did not buy the ice cream afterwards. The video of her licking the ice cream was viewed more than 13m times.