COLUMBUS, Ohio – Samples of food collected from a dumpster are now at the state’s laboratory in Reynoldsburg in hopes they will reveal the source of a suspected botulism outbreak that followed a church potluck in Lancaster.
READ MORE: In the Columbus Dispatch
The investigators trying to get to the bottom of the outbreak that has killed one and sickened several others also continue to look at potential sources still in the homes of parishioners from the Cross Pointe Free Will Baptist Church, 50 to 60 of whom attended the Sunday potluck, said Jennifer Valentine, a spokeswoman for the Fairfield Department of Health.
LEARN MORE: From the Ohio Department of Health
Home-canned foods — often implicated in food-borne botulism outbreaks — were in some of the dishes at the potluck, Valentine said. She would not say what types of canned foods were in the mix or what dishes the team sent to the Ohio Department of Health for testing.
Meanwhile, the Fairfield County coroner’s office has identified the woman who died from a suspected case of botulism as Kennetha “Kim” Shaw of Rushville.
Family and friends are preparing for a memorial service for Shaw, 55, Sunday at the Baptist church. Shaw died of suspected botulism Tuesday.
An investigator from the Fairfield County coroner’s office said that Shaw was especially vulnerable to the effects of the neurotoxin because of pre-existing medical conditions. Dr. Andrew Murry, an infectious disease expert at Fairfield Medical Center, has said it was unlikely that a government-supplied antitoxin would have saved her had it been available in time.
Shaw’s brother, reached by phone, said nobody in the family was available to talk. Shaw’s husband Chris could not be reached directly and a funeral director said the immediate family did not want to talk.
She also leaves behind a daughter and a son.