Inmate Dinner Wasn’t Tainted, Study Indicates

Food samples tested after 20 of 21 inmates in a cell at County Jail downtown claimed sickness showed no sign of poison, a county health official said Thursday.

The tests were ordered after the inmates in the protective-custody area said they experienced nausea and vomiting immediately after dinner June 9.

The Department of Health Services ran three types of toxicology tests on the food.

Dr. Donald G. Ramras, director of health services for San Diego County, said the negative results of the tests do not prove that the prisoners were not poisoned, because the lab only received samples of food and drink from the central kitchen.

Health officials did not test the food and hot chocolate consumed by the affected inmates because samples were not saved.

“The food that was submitted to us was food that had been set aside from the central kitchen, as is done routinely,” Ramras said.

He said that, after inspecting the central kitchen and speaking with many of the prisoners and deputies, his office came to several conclusions.

“Either an outbreak never did occur,” or maybe one or two inmates grew ill and the rest was hysteria, Ramras said.

Neither the deputies, the jail’s medical staff, nor the hospital staff reported seeing the inmates throw up, he said.

Ramras did not rule out the possibility that the symptoms were real, in which case, he said, “the likelihood is that somebody contaminated their drink, hot chocolate,” sometime after it left the kitchen.

From the rapid onset of the reported symptoms, Ramras said, the illness would have had to have been caused by chemical poisoning. The only possible source of that would have been the hot chocolate, Ramras explained.