A DoorDash delivery gone wrong turned into a nightmare for an Indiana couple — and a bizarre police investigation involving pepper spray, a doorbell camera, and one very strange excuse.
When Mark and Mandy Cardin ordered Arby’s through DoorDash earlier this month, they expected a quiet night in. Instead, they say they ended up vomiting and gasping for air after eating food that, police allege, had been sprayed with a chemical substance.
The whole incident was captured on the couple’s Ring doorbell camera.
The video, recorded on December 7, shows driver Kourtney Stevenson, a Kentucky native with blue hair, calmly placing the Arby’s order on the Cardins’ porch, taking a confirmation photo for the app — then pulling out an aerosol can and misting the bag before walking away.
“She looked so casual, like it was just part of the delivery process,” Mark Cardin said. “It’s chilling to watch.”
When police tracked Stevenson down, she offered a startling explanation: she wasn’t tampering with the food at all — she was “trying to spray a spider.”
According to investigators, Stevenson claimed she spotted an arachnid crawling near the doorstep and aimed the can in its direction. But the couple says the effects they felt were anything but harmless.
“I noticed my wife had started eating, and she started choking and gasping,” Mark told WFIE. “After a few bites, she threw up. Then my throat started burning too.”
After the incident, the couple tried to contact Stevenson through the DoorDash app, but she had already blocked them. Reviewing the footage, they posted screenshots to Facebook, where the video quickly spread.
Authorities in Indiana identified Stevenson and filed charges including two counts of battery resulting in moderate injury and two counts of consumer package tampering. She was later arrested in Kentucky and is awaiting extradition to Indiana.
The Cardins say they’re still shaken — and done with food delivery for good.
“We assume it’s pepper spray,” Mark said. “That’s more than likely what it is, but these days, it could’ve been anything — rat poison, fentanyl. My wife could’ve been dead.”
DoorDash said in a statement that the company “takes safety extremely seriously” and has deactivated the driver pending the investigation.
For now, the couple says they’re relying on drive-thru runs and home-cooked meals.
“I just can’t imagine trusting a stranger with our food again,” Mandy said. “Not after seeing what she did on that camera.”
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