A Texas man on Wednesday was sentenced to 30 days in jail for licking the contents of an ice cream box and putting it back in a grocery store freezer.
D’Adrien Anderson, 24, will serve an additional six-month jail term probated for two years, and is required to pay a $1,000 fine and $1,565 in restitution to Blue Bell Creameries, which forced the company to discard all products inside the freezer after Anderson uploaded a video of the incident to social media, according to The Associated Press.
Anderson started his jail term shortly after sentencing.
The incident happened in August at a Walmart in a town 85 miles outside of Houston. Security footage from the store shows Anderson eventually returning to the freezer to purchase the licked ice cream, which was not shown on the social media video, according to authorities.
The act was part of a much bigger Twitter hashtag that became popular in 2019 called #icecreamchallenge, the process of showing oneself on camera licking ice cream out of tubs in grocery stores and placing them back on the shelf, according to USA Today.
The challenge, unappealing to most people who witness it, inspired many responses on Twitter showing the paranoia some shoppers felt when purchasing ice cream from stores after the challenge went viral online.
Anderson could have faced more severe charges, including up to a year in jail and a fine of $4,000 for misdemeanor criminal mischief.
In June, a woman in Lufkin, Texas, who did the challenge also faced severe punishments, with threats of a 20-year jail sentence. Authorities later identified the suspect be a 17-year-old and said charges would be “at the discretion of the juvenile justice system,” according to NBC.
Blue Bell said that its ice cream cartons are frozen upside down to create a natural seal by freezing the lid to the tub, explaining that customers would notice any tampering when opening a fresh tub, according to the report.