Niles boy finds candy treat tainted by knife

The children received a lot of candy, but one candy bar stuck out among them.

By TIM YOVICH

VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF

NILES — When 10-year-old Marquis Porterfield reached into his bag and pulled out a candy bar after a couple hours of trick-or-treating, he held it between two fingers.

“You try to make it nice for the kids, and you have one bloomin’ idiot,” Rochelle Floyd, Marquis’ aunt, said of the Milky Way bar he found Halloween night — with a utility knife sticking out of it.

“It might be a long time before Marquis eats a Milky Way,” she added.

Floyd, of Scott Street, said that her 16-year-old daughter, Ashley Floyd, took her nieces and nephews out for trick-or-treating.

They had gathered at Floyd’s home. Along with Marquis were his 8-year-old brother, Mar’tae Porterfield, and 7-year-old sister, Realyti Porterfield.

Floyd, dressed in her Halloween costume, stayed home to pass out candy to the gremlins who came to her door.

The children went around to Belmont, Summit, Robbins and Ambrose avenues.

“They did some hiking,” Floyd said. “They hit every house.”

The kids returned with three very large bags of candy. As the kids began collecting their things to go to their Warren Avenue home with their mother, who had been working, Marquis picked up his plastic bag — reaching in to pull some out.

“There’s a knife in my candy bar,” Marquis told his family as he held up the small bar with the blade sticking out.

It was quickly taken away from him, so the young boy didn’t get cut, Floyd said.

The police were called, and the family took the candy bar to the police station.

“I know there’s not much they can do,” she noted.

Floyd has lived most of her life in Niles and at her Scott Street home since 1999.

“It’s usually pretty safe around here, so we all were surprised” when the tainted candy showed up, she said.

“It think it’s a malicious, cowardly thing to do,” Floyd said of anyone who would put a child in danger of being injured.

She believes it was an adult who tainted the candy. “They pass it out,” she said.

yovich@vindy.com