4A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
HEALTH
Peanut plant operating without license
BY DANNYROBBINS
Associated Press
DALLAS — A Texas agriculture inspector failed to note that a peanut plant at the center of a national salmonella outbreak was operating without a state health department license, despite at least three visits in the years before hundreds of people got sick, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The inspector responsible for certifying the plant to process organic products noted after each visit that the plant operated by Peanut Corp. of America had such a license when it didn't. Noting that the plant failed to obtain a license would have alerted the state health department, which for years had no record of the plant and didn't send its own inspectors there until recently.
When the plant was finally inspected earlier this year, Texas health officials found dead rodents, rodent excrement and bird feathers
in a crawl space above a production area, leading them to order a recall of all products the plant had shipped since 2005.
Tests have since shown that ground peanuts at the Plainview plant were contaminated, with
Texas Department of Agriculture
"I never really thought to follow up on it. It just never occurred to me that they wouldn't be licensed."
JACK MCCASLAND Environmental inspector
plant operated by Peanut Corp. which has filed for bankruptcy amid fallout from the outbreak.
the same strain of salmonella that sickened more than 650 people, is suspected of causing at least nine deaths, and led to one of the largest product recalls in U.S. history. Salmonella has also been detected in peanut samples from a Georgia
spokesman Bryan Black said if the lack of a license had been properly noted, the department would have denied it organic certification and notified the Department of State Health Services. The inspector, Gaylon Amonett, was fired on Feb. 13, the day after state health officials ordered the recall.
"We trust our inspectors to do their jobs," Black said. "Any time they do not follow the protocol, it is inexusable."
Because the Plainview plant was not licensed, state health officials
have said they had no record it existed and never sent their own inspectors to the facility to check for possible food safety problems. All food manufacturers in the state are required to obtain a license from the state health department.
Amonett, a 22-year TDA employee who worked out of the agency's Lubbock office, acknowledged that he checked "yes" to the question of whether the Plainview plant had records showing it was in compliance with health codes on worksheets he completed for inspections in 2005, 2006 and 2008.
The reason he checked "yes" the first time, he said, was because a plant manager told him an application for state health department licensing had been completed and was in the hands of Peanut Corp. officials at the company's headquarters. He said he conti-
ued to check "yes" in succeeding years because he assumed that the license was granted.
"It's an inadvertent mistake, and I'm sorry for it," he said.
Amonett said the matter was his "only mistake" in his years as an inspector. Agriculture department records show that he received a merit raise on Jan. 1.
Jack McCasland, environmental inspector for the Plainview-Hale County Health Department, said plant officials led him to believe the licensing process was under way when he visited the facility before it opened.
"To be honest, I never really thought to follow up on it," McCasland said. "It just never occurred to me that they wouldn't be (licensed)"
Organic certification allows companies to market products as organically grown or produced.
NATIONAL Neighborhood shooting kills five and injures one
NATIONAL
CLEVELAND — Police were searching Thursday night for a man who fled on foot from a west side residential neighborhood after a shooting in which five people, including children, were killed and at least one other person was wounded.
Police SWAT, vice and gang units and a police helicopter swarmed on the two-family home on a street of older, mostly two-story frame homes and some apartment buildings. A police helicopter assisted in the search and authorities were checking transit system buses.
A few people were milling around, some who were curious and some who claimed to be family and friends of those killed.
One man said he was distraught and came to the area because his daughter lives on the street. The shootings happened around 8 p.m.
Associated Press
NATIONAL
Woman sentenced for killing husband
Stacey Castor poisoned her husband then tried to frame her daughter for the murder
BY WILLIAM KATES Associated Press
Associated Press
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — An upstate New York woman was sentenced Thursday to more than 50 years in prison for poisoning her husband with antifreeze and then trying to kill her daughter and frame her as the murderer.
Onondaga County Judge Joseph Fahey told Stacey Castor that he had "never seen a parent willing to sacrifice their child to shift the blame away from themselves."
of drugs and vodka in September 2007.
Fahey sentenced Castor, 41, to the maximum of 25 years to life for the murder of David Castor at their Syracuse home in August 2005, and to another 25 years for the attempt to kill daughter Ashley Wallace, then 20, with an overdose
The judge also ordered Castor to an additional 1 1/3 to four years in prison for forging her husband's will.
"In my 34 years in the criminal justice system as a lawyer and a judge. I have seen serial killers, contract killers, killers of every variety and stripe," Fahey said. "But, I have to say Mrs. Castor, you are in a class all by yourself."
District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said Castor will have to serve at least 51 1/3 years behind bars before she's eligible for parole.
"I have seen killers of every variety and stripe. But, I have to say Mrs. Castor, you are in a class all by yourself."
"In light of her age, it is very
JOSEPH FAHEY County judge
Wallace told the judge she hated her mother "for ruining so many people's lives."
ot her age, it is very likely she will die in prison," Fitzpatrick said.
Charles Keller, Castor's lawyer, has said he will appeal her conviction.
David Castor's death at age 48 was initially considered a suicide, but investigators later determined he didn't
knowingly drink ethylene glycol, a toxic chemical found in antifreeze.
Castor has not been charged in Michael Wallace's killing, but Fitzpatrick used evidence about his death to build the case against her. Cayuga County authorities plan to meet with Fitzpatrick to discuss the Wallace case.
Stacey Castor was not charged with the killing until September 2007, after investigators in neighboring Cayuga County exhumed the body of her first husband, Michael Wallace. Doctors originally ruled that the 38-year-old Wallace died of a heart attack, but after the exhumation, authorities ruled the death a homicide caused by ingesting ethylene glycol.
With sister Bree Wallace at her side, Ashley Wallace, right, reads a prepared statement on Thursday to Onondaga County Judge Joe Fahey before he pronounced Stacey Castor's sentence for the poison-murder of her husband David Castor in August of 2005 and the attempted murder of daughter Ashley.
Prosecutors said Castor killed her husbands to collect on their life insurance and estates.
Fitzpatrick said Castor tried to kill her daughter and frame her for killing both men when the woman was being investigated for the deaths. Ashley Wallace nearly died from a mix of sleeping pills, vodka and prescription pills, but she recovered from the poisoning.
NATIONAL Felon escapes during trial had escaped from jail before
SANTA ANA, Calif. — A felon who escaped jail through a storm drain in 2003 is on the run again in Southern California.
Authorities said Thursday they have not located Mark Georgantas since he walked out of an Orange County courthouse during his grand theft trial.
Prosecutors say he asked to use the bathroom during the trial Tuesday and disappeared. In his absence he was convicted of
Defense attorney Frank Sundstedt says he doesn't know where his client is.
His escape comes six years after he and another inmate escaped from an Irvine jail. Georgantas was serving a one-year sentence for conspiracy to defraud, grand theft and violating probation.
'our counts of felony grand theft or using stolen credit cards.
Managers removed from L.A. railroad company
Connex Railroad made the announcement Thursday after commuter rail service Metrolink asked the company to find new management.
involved in last year's deadly train collision in Los Angeles says it will comply with a request to remove its two top managers.
LOS ANGELES — The contractor that provided the engineer
Metrolink says its request was prompted by federal findings that Connex engineer Robert Sanchez had allowed unauthorized rides in Metrolink train cars and used his cell phone just before the crash.
Associated Press
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