Layton family: ‘We are heartbroken’

By Bob Mims, Erin Alberty and Jason Bergreen

The Salt Lake Tribune

A Layton family has lost its second daughter since toxic pesticide fumes apparently wafted into their home last weekend.

Rachel Toone, 15 months, died Tuesday at Primary Children’s Medical Center. Three days earlier her 4-year-old sister, Rebecca, died at Davis Hospital after she had begun struggling to breathe in the family’s home.

“We are heartbroken,” the Toone family wrote in a press statement announcing Rachel’s death. Rachel’s health deteriorated after heart failure early Monday, the family wrote.

Authorities suspect the toxic gas phosphine sickened the family. Investigators say the gas may have entered into the family’s home after an exterminator dropped Fumitoxin aluminum phosphide pellets in burrow holes in the lawn Friday to kill small rodents known as voles.

Rebecca Toone died Saturday after she grew sick in the family’s home. Her parents and siblings also were hospitalized with flu-like symptoms the same day. They were all discharged Sunday, but Rachel fell ill again later that day.

Meanwhile, a Sandy woman, Alice Pittman, said Wednesday that she now wonders if a September 2008 Fumitoxin application by the same exterminators – Bountiful-based Bugman Pest and Lawn – may be connected to the deaths of her two Basset hound puppies. She said the poison was applied in a rodent-infested pasture abutting her fence line.

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