“It was a very painful ordeal for her. It was almost impossible for her to talk near the end,” Donna Ventura’s husband, Jon Ventura, tells Inside Edition.
A Montana woman died after getting food poisoning from eating sushi, her family says.
Donna Ventura was eating lunch at a sushi restaurant where she ordered the “special roll.” An hour later, she was clinging to life with severe food poisoning.
After 13 days in the hospital, Ventura became weak and wrote a final message to her family saying, “I don’t think I can or want to go on.”
The local health department says it was most likely a morel mushroom, not the raw fish in the sushi, that was served to Ventura and triggered the deadly food poisoning.
Over 50 individuals reported becoming sick after consuming morel mushrooms at Dave’s Sushi Restaurant in Boseman, Montana, according to the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services.
Ventura’s husband, Jon Ventura, spoke with Inside Edition.
“She ordered the special of the day, which included morel mushrooms,” Jon says. “Uncooked morels as we now know can be lethal.”
Jon’s wife of 33 years went into cardiac arrest and suffered multiple organ failures as toxins surged through her body.
“It was a very painful ordeal for her. It was almost impossible for her to talk and near the end. She wrote a note to me that said, ‘I love you,’ and then she wrote a note to our son that said, ‘I love you Mr. C,’ which was her nickname for our son.”
Jon wears his and Donna’s wedding rings around his neck.
According to the health department, the morel mushrooms that were served to Donna were raw and “reportedly prepared without any cooking process.”
Morel mushrooms grow in the wild and many chefs add the mushroom to dishes as long as they are cooked.
“Hunting morel mushrooms is very popular among some people. They are a good edible mushroom if they are cooked thoroughly,” assistant professor of Food Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Dr. Heather Hallen-Adams, tells Inside Edition. “You don’t eat raw chicken, you don’t generally eat raw beef. There are just some foods you just need to cook and with morels, it’s very important.”
Donna’s family is suing the restaurant. The restaurant denies any wrongdoing.
