State health officials said on Friday that one of the three people in the country who died from contaminated spinach is from Sarpy County, Nebraska.
Ruby Trautz, 81, of Bellevue got sick after eating spinach in late August. She died a short time later. Her daughter Polly and her husband Ken told KETV Channel 7 that neither they nor Trautz knew that she had contracted E. coli poisoning.
The Costellos, who learned of Trautz’s diagnosis weeks after her death, believe that thousands of contamination cases have likely gone unreported.
After several tests, state health officials confirmed the spinach Trautz ate was part of the tainted strain from California, but they don’t expect to see any more Nebraska cases.