The Tampa Tribune TAMPA — The family of four, two of them elementary school-age children, had dinner on Monday night, a nice meal of bottom round steak.
Then they began hallucinating, so bad they called 911, then rushed to the hospital themselves.
On Friday, Tampa police announced why: The meat had been laced with LSD.
The family bought the meat from the Wal-Mart at 1501 N. North Dale Mabry Highway, just north of Interstate 275, but police said they don’t yet have any idea when or where the meat became tainted with the hallucinogen.
“The family has no idea where this may have come from,” Police Chief Jane Castor said. “There is no indication of any involvement on the part of the family. It’s a very dynamic investigation that is in its initial phase.”
“Everything is on the table right now,” Castor said. “We’re not going to speculate on any theory. We’re going to investigate everything from top to bottom to ensure that we figure out where this came from.”
The incident started at around 9 p.m. Monday when Ronnie Morales, 24, of 2744 Bel Aire Circle, Tampa, began to feel sick at his home after dinner, Castor said.
His symptoms quickly worsened. The family called 911, but because they live just blocks from St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa, his girlfriend, Jessica Rosado, who was nine months pregnant, drove him to the hospital.
When they arrived, Rosado began to feel sick as well. Both were hallucinating and had rapid heart rates and dizziness, Castor said.
Soon afterward, the children, 7-year-old Elyana Serrano, and Rayna Serrano, who turned 6 on Friday, also started to hallucinate and feel ill.
Morales and the two girls received tracheal intubation and were hospitalized. They were released Wednesday in good condition, Castor said.
“The fact that they had to be intubated is very serious,” Castor said. “Timely medical attention was in need.”
Doctors at St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital induced labor in Rosado, 31, who gave birth to a baby boy. Mother and baby were both released Thursday from the hospital in good condition, Castor said.
The family declined to comment on Friday.
Tampa police detectives are investigating along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Florida Department of Agriculture, the Hillsborough County Health Department and the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Wal-Mart has been cooperative with the investigation, Castor said.
Wal-Mart has been working with investigators and removed all the bottom round steak from its shelf, the company said in a statement.
“Like everyone else in the community, we are deeply disturbed about this situation and are taking it very seriously,” company spokeswoman Dianna Gee said in the statement. “We want answers and we’re committed to working with officials to get to the bottom of this. We know our customers expect safe, quality food and we require our suppliers to meet the highest of food safety standards.”
Gee said the company has contacted its meat supplier and was told there had been no reports of similar incidents. She said the store also is reviewing its surveillance video “to see if we can find any information that might assist in the investigation. At this point, we’re not aware of any suspicious activity.”
Police investigators took the oven from the home and the remantns of food the family had eaten Monday night. The family only had lived in the home two days and it was their first home-cooked meal there, Castor said.
Investigators aren’t aware of any other cases in the area involving meat laced with LSD, Castor said.
“We have no information to indicate that this is anything other than an isolated case,” Castor said.
Dawn Thomas who was shopping at the Dale Mabry Highway Walmart on Friday night, said she was disturbed by the incident.
“This is sickening,” she said. “I don’t know how somebody in good conscience could have done that. Now you have children and an entire family affected.”
jpatino@tampatrib.com
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Twitter: @jpatinoTBO
http://tbo.com/news/crime/family-poisoned-with-lsd-laced-meat-tampa-police-say-20140307/
I do not believe this for a second as heat destroys LSD.
Plus last I have heard about 4 -5 yrs ago when I had to take a drug test for my job I was told that there was no test for LSD.
If anything I would say it would be maybe some DMT or something like that as it is virtually impossible for it to be LSD mainly because the LSD is completely destroyed if heated like it would be if cooked in a oven like the article said.
It could perhaps be mescaline or DMT or maybe even salvia divinorium, but mark my words this was not LSD.
Ha, I would like to know how and why they are assuming that it was LSD.
Perhaps this family should be given a drug test for drugs that they actually do have tests for.
any left-overs?
🙂 I would love to test those left overs with ya JR 😉
hahaha you guys are funny. 🙂
😆
“The family bought the meat from the Wal-Mart at 1501 N. North Dale Mabry Highway, just north of Interstate 275,”
Tampa, Florida
Not LSD, if needed to be intubated then possibly strychnine. Did they have any mushrooms with the meal? Bad magic mushrooms will cause exactly that reaction.
Mushrooms would be a likely candidate too, however it would be unlikely that they would have missed the mushrooms unless the mushrooms were broken down to more of a injectable form.
Mushrooms would be a candidate for this though, I do not think though that there is a drug test for mushrooms/psilosybin though either. I am kind thinking that that family was out there lickin` one of those Buffo Frogs/toads. lol
Actually I could bet that this family is just lookin` for a lawsuit against walmart.
In fact like I said above it would be aweful hard to test for LSD in any other meat samples as there is no test for that , well I guess that there may be a spectograph test- well actually we used to use a black light to see if we were getting the real thing when we bought LSD and even then that black light would only show that there were alkaloids present, they use those lights to test a lot of things like meth and coke ect. ect too – there and if there were some other drug involed in this it would seem very funny that this family got the only package.