A former Arby’s manager in McCurtain County has been charged with felony poisoning after police in Broken Bow said camera footage showed Amanda Hendricks spitting in a customer’s food. A warrant has now been issued for her arrest, and the case has moved from a restaurant complaint to a criminal charge.
The name at the center of it is Jennica Church. She said she stopped at an Arby’s in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, after a long night of bartending and ate the sandwiches with her father-in-law and grandmother-in-law after leaving the restaurant. Church said her mouth flared up afterward and a doctor later diagnosed her with herpes, turning what she thought was an upsetting meal into a fear that has followed her family since.
That is why people are looking for this now. The charge, the arrest warrant and the lawsuit landed together, giving the case a sharper edge than a routine food complaint. Church and her family have sued Hendricks, Arby’s and affiliated restaurant groups, saying the incident caused extreme anxiety, emotional distress and fear of infection. Church also said Hendricks had been bragging about spitting in her sandwiches, a detail that made the allegation feel deliberate rather than impulsive.
Police in Broken Bow said they pulled cameras from the restaurant and saw Hendricks spit in the food. What investigators have not made public is anything beyond that footage, and that gap matters. Church says the diagnosis came after the meal, but the record described in the report does not show direct medical proof tying the herpes diagnosis to the alleged spitting. The family’s attorney, Will Blocker, said no other employees who witnessed the spit did anything to stop it, arguing that the failure reached beyond one person.
Blocker said the problem may not stop with one store. He pointed to Flynn Restaurant Group and the 300 stores it owns, suggesting the case could force a broader look at how such conduct was allowed to happen. For now, the criminal case and the civil suit are moving on separate tracks, and the unanswered question is not whether a video exists but whether the harm Church says she suffered can be linked in court to what police say they saw on camera.
