source : the age
By Erin Pearson
A council health officer has told a court he searched more than a dozen Asian grocery stores across south-east Melbourne to try to identify the source of a suspected outbreak of mushroom-related “illness”.
Troy Schonknecht, an environmental health officer with the City of Monash, testified before the Supreme Court in Morwell on day 17 of the trial of Erin Patterson, who is accused of the murder of three people who died of mushroom poisoning after serving them a lunch of beef Wellington at her home.
City of Monash environmental health officer Troy Schonknecht.Credit: Jason South
Schonknecht told the court that he had been contacted by a Department of Health employee on August 1, 2023, asking for help after a group of people had become unwell after eating what was thought to be mushrooms.
“The only thing that they told us was that it was either possibly Oakleigh, Clayton or Mount Waverley and they’d confirm in an email tomorrow,” Schonknecht said.
“They alleged that the person may have purchased the mushrooms from an Asian grocer in those suburbs. But they did not say when, yet.”
Using the council’s business database, he said he established which premises potentially had mushrooms for sale before attending them all and taking photographs inside the stores of dried and fresh mushrooms on display.
A subsequent email from the department, he said, narrowed the search to a likely purchase in April 2023 of dried mushrooms that looked like they had been grown locally, which were packaged in clear, unbranded bags.
The scope of the search was then further confined to sliced dry mushrooms, potentially of the shiitake or porcini variety.
Schonknecht said he visited a range of stores in Oakleigh, Clayton and Mount Waverley where he spoke to the owners and documented anything that may fit the scope of his search.
He said he was only able to find one mushroom source that appeared to have been repackaged.
The owner of the store, he said, told him a larger item had been repackaged into smaller bags as shoppers largely only wanted to purchase the mushrooms in smaller amounts.
He said none of the mushroom sellers believed they had changed suppliers or been approached by anyone to sell non-commercially grown mushrooms between April and August 2023.
As the investigation continued, the witness said he was also given further information from the Department of Health’s food safety unit that the person who had purchased the mushrooms in question recalled buying them from a store in a shopping strip, rather than an enclosed shopping centre, but had been unable to narrow down the suburb.
Earlier in the trial, a witness, Jenny Hay, told the court that Erin Patterson had told her during a phone call that the mushrooms she had used in the fatal mushroom meal had come from an Asian grocer.
Erin Patterson is accused of murdering her parents-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, by serving them poisonous mushrooms in a beef Wellington lunch she cooked at her Leongatha home on July 29, 2023.
The Pattersons and Heather Wilkinson died in the days after the meal from the effects of mushroom poisoning.
Heather’s husband, Ian, also ate the lunch but survived after weeks in hospital.
Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder and one of attempted murder.
‘She’s got this pain’, nurse who treated Erin Patterson tells court
A nurse has described the moments after Erin Patterson first arrived at a Gippsland hospital, explaining that she complained about feeling ill several days after a lunch she served containing mushrooms.
The nurse, Mairim Cespon, told jurors she was working at Leongatha Hospital on July 31, 2023, when two other people who had eaten lunch two days prior at Erin Patterson’s home – Heather and Ian Wilkinson – showed up, followed by Patterson herself.
Mairim Cespon, who worked as a nurse at Leongatha Hospital, outside the court on Thursday. Credit: Jason South
The nurse said she was initially assigned to take care of the Wilkinsons when they were moved from a ward back into urgent care for closer supervision – before their transfer to Dandenong Hospital – when possible mushroom poisoning was identified.
“I initially saw [Erin Patterson] about roughly 8am. I was informed she presented. We were really focused on giving care to Heather. I just saw her peripherally. I did not have any interaction with her at that time,” Cespon said.
The nurse said shortly after that she was made aware that Patterson had left, then later returned about 9.48am.
Cespon described to the court the moments after Patterson initially arrived at the hospital.
Heather Wilkinson and Ian Wilkinson.
“She pressed the buzzer as what patients would usually do, then I attended to her. Initially, I wasn’t sure if … that was actually her. Then she said she was Erin Patterson and she was asked to be assessed because … she said she was nauseous, had diarrhoea but wasn’t vomiting.
“I did settle her into a cubicle shortly after.”
Erin Patterson.Credit: Jason South
Cespon said she was present when Dr Christopher Webster spoke to Erin Patterson, which included a discussion about the need for Patterson’s children to be examined.
“At that point Erin became emotional. She was crying. She said was it necessary as her kids did not eat the mushrooms, the kids did not have any symptoms. She did not want them stressed or panicked getting pulled out of school … to be assessed.”
Over the following hour or so, Cespon said, she examined the toilet after Erin Patterson emerged from the cubicle, and agreed that what she had found there appeared consistent with bowel movements.
The nurse recalled Patterson telling her that she had become nauseous on the evening of July 29, 2023, before her diarrhoea began.
“[She was] saying she feels unwell, she’s got this pain, having these loose bowel motions.”
Cespon said she was also present when police were called to perform a welfare check on Patterson after she left following her initial presentation to hospital.
During the call, she said she passed the phone to Patterson, who told the officers they could find food scraps in a paper bag in the bin at her home.
“She mentioned that the food scraps was the meal that she scraped from the kids because the kids don’t eat mushrooms,” the witness said.
When police dropped the scraps off at the hospital, she said she looked inside the bag, alongside Erin Patterson, before placing them under a desk in the nursing station.
The leftovers, she said, were later handed to paramedics.
The trial continues.
