Health Law

Outbreak May Be Over, But Suffering Continues In Locust Grove, OK

By Marler Clark LLP

There are places with bad karma and it makes you wonder why.   Locust Grove, OK is such a place.  The town of 1500 was, 30 years ago, the center for the murders of three Girl Scouts at camp.  Murders that remain unsolved.   Then there was the more recent killing of an elderly couple south of town. Killings that remain unsolved.

Now there's the outbreak of E. coli 0111 that made more than 300 sick and killed 26-year old Chad Ingle, a bank teller and newlywed from the nearby town of Pryor.  Officially the outbreak is over, but the suffering continues.

KJRH-TV 2 in Tulsa reports:

13-year-old Lexy Morton was hospitalized due to E. coli for five weeks.

"She went through kidney dialysis.  She had trouble with her pancreas, her kidneys, and her liver.  She's lost a lot of muscle mass and a lot of weight," said Becky Morton, Lexy's mother.

She's been out of the hospital for a week now, but her treatments aren't over yet, "They're still taking bloodwork.  We have to go a couple of times a week to the doctor," said Morton.

The Morton family is uninsured and now coping with $800,000 in medical bills.  For more, go here.

Health officials have yet to find out how the 0111 strain of E coli got into the Country Cottage restaurant in Locust Grove, where most of the victims contacted the bacteria.

Whether or not it will remain another Locust Grove unsolved mystery remains to be seen.  With the bad karma, however, we fear his too may remain unsolved.

Full post as published by e.Coli Blog on September 30, 2008 (boomark / email).