Donna ate sushi – died in hospital: Poisoned by mushrooms

Donna Ventura, 64, became ill an hour after the sushi lunch.

After twelve days in intensive care, her body gave up.

“I can’t handle the pain,” she wrote on a note before she died.

Donna and husband Jon had met some friends for lunch at the local sushi place in Bozeman, Montana.

It was April 17 last year.

What she and other guests didn’t know was that a ticking bomb was in the restaurant’s kitchen.

Twelve-day fight for life

Donna chose rolls with salmon and mushrooms. Her company ate other types of sushi pieces.

An hour after lunch, the 64-year-old became violently ill.

– I called an ambulance and at the hospital she suffered a cardiac arrest, says Jon Ventura to the TV channel KBZK.

For twelve days she fought for her life under severe pain in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

Toxins from the raw mushroom in the sushi rolls knocked out her kidneys and liver and damaged her windpipe and esophagus.

The injuries left Donna Ventura unable to speak. The family gave her paper and a red marker so she could communicate.

Wrote last greeting

“I don’t think I can take this much longer. How are we going to get through this? I can’t handle the pain,” she wrote towards the end.

Donna also used the pen to say goodbye to her husband and son.

– The last thing she wrote was to me and our son. She wrote “I love you”, says Jon to KBZK.

The couple met in 1987, married in 1999 and in 2019 moved from New Mexico with their two dogs to a house in Montana with a large lot and a beautiful view.

There they would grow old together.

On April 29 last year, she died.

51 affected at the restaurant

And she wasn’t the only one to suffer catastrophic food poisoning at the sushi restaurant.

Another person died in the outbreak, a 74-year-old man who fell ill overnight after eating the sushi rolls on the evening of April 17.

A further 49 became ill. Three so seriously that they ended up in hospital.

Symptoms included severe diarrhea and vomiting.

The CDC, the US Public Health Agency, closed the restaurant and launched a major investigation.

Imported mushroom

The evidence quickly pointed to the fungus in the rolls that all the sick had ordered.

It was a mushroom in the genus morchella, “morel mushroom” in English, which was imported from China.

The most common mushrooms in the genus are various types of morels, some of which are classified as poisonous by the Swedish Food Agency and others are considered delicacies.

The product had also been imported by restaurants in other states, the investigation showed.

However, there were no cases of illness or death reported.

But a crucial difference could be shown.

Served raw

Other restaurants had cooked the mushrooms properly before serving them. Only the restaurant in Montana used it partially raw.

The restaurant had marinated the mushrooms for 75 minutes and then poured a hot, boiling sauce over them, states the CDC in its final report.

The CDC states that both Donna Ventura and the 74-year-old man had underlying illnesses that may have contributed to their deaths in the outbreak.

Jon says that the wife made the decision not to be tube-fed, as an approach is made via the nose to the stomach. She could not eat because her throat was destroyed.

– When you have been married as long as we have been, you understand your partner’s body language and expressions. The third or fourth time I brought it up, I got a look that said ‘I’ve made my decision and that’s enough, I don’t want to talk about it any more,'” says Jon Ventura to the TV channel.

Wear the wedding ring around your neck

After his wife’s death, Jon wears a necklace with their wedding rings melted together.

Now he has decided to do one last thing for Donna, to whom he was married for almost 35 years.

– I told my wife on her deathbed that I would hold them accountable for what they had done.

He is now pursuing a lawsuit against the restaurant, Dave’s Sushi in Bozeman.

Five of the restaurant’s employees became ill themselves after eating the same rolls.