Tyson Foods CFO arrested after drunkenly entering woman’s home
The chief financial officer of America’s largest meat processing company is facing accusations that he drunkenly broke into the home of a woman he didn’t know and passed out in her bed over the weekend.
According to reports that police provided to local media, a college-aged woman found John R Tyson – the 32year-old CFO of Tyson Foods – asleep in her bed at her home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, at about 2.05am Sunday. She called police and told them that she didn’t know Tyson, who may have gotten in through the front door, which she may have left unlocked.
An officer responding to that call confirmed Tyson’s identity by searching through his clothes on the floor and finding his ID in his wallet. The officer woke Tyson up, and though the food company executive briefly sat straight, he wouldn’t say anything and eventually tried to return to sleep, police said in their report, according to reports from various media outlets on Monday.
The officer reported being able to smell “intoxicants” coming from Tyson’s breath and body, and his “movements were sluggish and uncoordinated”. Police jailed him on counts of criminal trespass and public intoxication after confirming that he had not been invited to stay at the home and that no one there knew him.
Tyson was released on Sunday evening on a bond of $415, records showed. He was scheduled for a 1 December court appearance.
The accused intruder is the son of Tyson Foods’ chairman, John H Tyson. The 32-year-old Tyson, a fourth-generation member of his family, joined the company in 2019, and after an appointment to senior leadership in late September now serves as both CFO and an executive vice-president.
Tyson Foods is ranked 81st on the Fortune 500 list published by Forbes and had a reported revenue of $47bn for its last fiscal year. Headquartered in Springdale, Arkansas, about 10 miles from Fayetteville, it accounts for the single largest share of chicken plants across the US.
The company also supplies burgers, nuggets and other chicken products to Walmart, McDonald’s, KFC, Taco Bell and other chains, along with schools and prisons.
Tyson Foods released a statement to news outlets saying it was aware of its CFO’s arrest. But the statement described the arrest as “a personal matter” and didn’t elaborate.
Attempts to contact John R Tyson were unsuccessful, and information about whether he had retained an attorney to represent him in connection with his arrest wasn’t immediately available on Tuesday.