Hagerstown woman’s death linked to E. coli
January 30, 2007
Washington Post
More evidence has linked the death of a Hagerstown woman to last fall’s spinach-borne E. coli outbreak. Health officials reported the Sept. 13, 2006, death of June Dunning, 86, of Hagerstown, as “suspicious,” but because of a problem with tissue samples, it was never confirmed as part of the outbreak. Last week, after further testing, the Centers for Disease Control said in a letter forwarded to Dunning’s family that E. coli found in an open bag of spinach taken from her home was “indistinguishable” from bacteria found in a bag from an Illinois victim “which also yielded the outbreak strain.”