The Staff of Death

At first it looked as if a Tijuana dairy operator had carelessly put a batch of spoiled milk on the market. A few children died, local authorities impounded all local milk, and a tragic, but minor, episode seemed closed. It was not; Tijuana's children kept dying for no apparent cause. By week's end 17 youngsters were dead--and more than 300 others had been treated for poisoning at local hospitals. Lab tests turned up traces of a deadly pesticide called parathion in the tissues of victims, and the poison was soon traced to bread from their tables. Tijuana police closed all bakeries and other stores selling bread; sound trucks even warned against eating tortillas. The almost certain source of the poison was a government warehouse in Mexicali that distributed flour and sugar to Tijuana. There, sitting amid the ingredients for making bread, police found a huge stock of the deadly insecticide.

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