Nearly four dozen confirmed cases of salmonella poisoning have now been linked to a restaurant in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
Dozens of those people are now suing Los Amigos, which was ordered by the city to close last week.
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“I got an al pastor burrito, which had some grilled pork in it, some pineapple,” said customer Chris Candelora.
Candelora said he went to Los Amigos with five friends last week. By the next day, he started feeling chills and aches. Soon, he was experiencing intestinal symptoms and couldn’t keep anything down.
“And so Saturday, I ended up having a pretty severe headache, I figured from dehydration. So I checked in to an urgent care to get an IV,” he said
State health officials said so far, lab testing has confirmed salmonella in 45 people who say they ate recently at the Los Amigos location in Brighton, with additional reports still coming in.
Salmonella is a kind of bacteria that is sometimes found in undercooked meat, poultry and eggs.
“For a restaurant outbreak, this is a pretty big restaurant outbreak,” said attorney Jory Lange.
Lange is a Texas-based attorney representing Candelora and 32 other Los Amigos customers, some of which are still in the hospital. He believes contaminated food is likely not the source of the salmonella, but rather somebody who was working at the restaurant while already infected.
“This restaurant has five different locations, and we’re only getting calls from people who went to the Brighton location. If it was a contaminated product, we would be seeing sick people from all of them, assuming they have a common supplier,” Lange said.
The Los Amigos restaurant in West Roxbury was also ordered to close after health inspectors found numerous violations last week. No salmonella cases have been linked to that location.
