Boston Stop & Shop Reopens After Rodent Infestation

The store had been closed since dead mice and rodent droppings were found inside

The store was allowed to open again, but the parking lot at the Stop & Shop in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood was barren Wednesday evening.

Customers trickled in throughout the day, especially before dinner time, but the customer base was not the norm after the store was shut down by Boston Inspectional Services for two days following an infestation of mice and other violations.

An Eco-lab report obtained shows "quite a bit" of mouse droppings were removed from the ceiling panels over the bakery, but that a more detailed cleaning could be done as a follow-up.

"I'm so glad they are open," said one customer. 'They did a good job," said one customer.

"It's clean," said another. "It's real clean, so I hope it stays that way."

All of the contaminated food was removed and destroyed.

Necn is also learning Wednesday that another complaint has been lodged against the store. One woman claims she and her husband got sick after eating Italian sausages.

The report was filed with city officials Monday, the same day city inspectors shut the store down for major cleaning and repairs.

Yet another complaint has been filed with Inspectional Services this week, claiming a Jamaica Plain Stop & Shop appears to have filthy deli counters.

The customer also says they overhead employees talking about mice.

Inspectional services says they're looking into the complaints, and that there will be random inspections of supermarkets.

As for skeptical customers in Roxbury who say the infestation didn't happen overnight, the commissioner of Inspectional Services, William Christopher, says the store was safe prior to Monday.

"Yes, we've had inspectors in here as early as three weeks ago and we had a couple of non-minor violations, so my answer to that question is yes, and we saw it reach the level when we had concerns we closed the store," he said.

Stop & Shop has apologized to customers and says they'll be doing re-training and their own internal inspections as well.

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