Restaurant warnings urged after teen's death

Jan. 26/05
Knight-Ridder Tribune
Byline: The Charlotte Observer, N.C.
Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

CONCORD -- Early Saturday afternoon, Gina Marie Hunt, 14, excitedly called her grandmother, who was shopping nearby in Concord Mills. The story says she had found a $50 sweater on sale for $5.

Then the Concord eighth-grader went to the food court with a friend to get Chinese food.

About 20 minutes later, Gina collapsed. She died shortly afterward of a severe allergic reaction to peanuts, her mother said at the graveside service Tuesday afternoon.

Now, the story says, her mother, local health officials and other area parents whose children are allergic to peanuts are calling on restaurants to post warnings if they use peanuts or peanut traces as ingredients.

Experts say peanut allergies are becoming more common. Among the most dangerous food allergens, peanuts can cause a violent reaction with a drop in blood pressure and closing of airways.

Gina and her family were extremely cautious about her allergy, said her mother, Sandra Price.

Price even asked Northwest Cabarrus Middle School officials to make sure that on field trips, Gina would ride in a bus with no peanut snacks or peanut-butter sandwiches aboard.

But this one time, said her grandmother Nina Realmuto, Gina was "caught up in the moment" and forgot to ask whether the food at Yeung's Lotus Express contained peanut products.

She also wasn't carrying her syringe of epinephrine, which can reduce the effects of severe allergic reactions, Price said.

Gina, realizing she was having an allergic attack, called Realmuto on her cell phone.

Gina, who also had asthma, used the inhaler she kept in her purse. "She said, 'I'm throwing up. We have to go home,' " Realmuto said. But by the time she found her, Gina was on her stomach on the floor of the mall.

A nurse came by and performed CPR.

Cabarrus County paramedics gave Gina epinephrine shots and took her to NorthEast Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead about 2:30 p.m. Price said she didn't get the name of the nurse who tried to help her daughter but would like to thank her.

Fred Pilkington, executive director of the Cabarrus Health Alliance, was cited as saying that restaurants aren't required to post such warnings, adding, "It's an excellent idea because teenagers don't always ask questions like that, and they don't know they're getting a peanut ... product."

In a check Tuesday, no fast-food stops in the mall's food court had signs warning about peanut ingredients.

Efforts to reach Bethesda, Md.-based HMS Host, which owns Yeung's Lotus Express, were unsuccessful Tuesday.