Salt Lake City Costco Protects Sarah Palin from Potential Tomato-Throwing

Costco (COST) was the Salt Lake City host on Sarah Palin's book-signing tour, and apparently the store took some precautions.

Managers did not want a repeat of the Mall of America incident, where a man attempted to throw a tomato at Palin, only to hit a police officer instead. So Costco removed all tomatoes from the store during the book-signing, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. A shopper, unaware of the scheduled Palin event when she decided to go shopping that day, wound up getting free tomatoes as an apology when they weren't readily available.

Presumably Costco did not stow away anything other than tomatoes, but fortunately for Palin and the Costco managers, no attempts were made to throw alternative vegetables or other small, throwable products.