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Woman dies after ants bite her in nursing home bed
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6-5-2000 Sarasota, Fla. In the 11th such indoor attack since 1989, an 87-year-old Alzheimer’s patient died May 19 after enduring 1,625 fire ant bites in her nursing home bed. Only an hour and a half after an aide at Quality Health Care Center in North Port had checked on Mary Morales Gay the morning of May 18, a housekeeper noticed the insects had burrowed under a wall and basement into her room, bypassed a candy bar and her roommate, and attacked Gay, investigating detective Stephen Lorenz said. "There’s a colony in the courtyard near her room," Lorenz said. "On hot days, the ants seek moisture and cool shelter. For them to specifically target her is maybe a little odd, but it does happen. The nursing home had just conducted some routine spraying. It seems to have just been an unfortunate incident." Center administrator Ralph Ham echoed those words, adding that Gay, formerly the co-owner of a trucking company, had enrolled in the home just one month ago. Although the staff follows a standard procedure for checking on residents, Ham would not divulge whether this included pulling back bed covers, as this might affect the ongoing investigation. Lorenz so far has found no probable cause or criminal neglect by the 15-year-old institution, although other state agencies are investigating. Gay’s family has not contacted the home about any legal action, and her son Edgar could not be reached for comment. A toxicology report due in six to eight weeks will determine which species of ant bit Gay throughout her upper body. Both the red imported fire ant and the black variety seem to have arrived from South America in the soil used for ship ballast in the 1930s, according to a 1994 University of Florida Department of Entomology and Nematology bulletin. The extremely aggressive insects have spread throughout the South, attacking animals and people, though indoor attacks are rare, according to a 1999 research article at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
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