Listeriosis a factor, not cause, in deaths

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Kansas health officials say a food-borne illness linked to some Blue Bell ice cream products may have been a contributing factor in the deaths of three hospital patients.

But Kansas Department of Health and Environment spokeswoman Sara Belfry said Saturday that listeriosis didn’t cause the deaths.

Belfry said the only detail she could provide about the patients at Via Christi St. Francis hospital in Wichita, Kansas, is that they were adults.

Hospital spokeswoman Maria Loving said she couldn’t discuss why the patients were hospitalized, citing patient confidentiality laws.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says five people developed listeriosis in Kansas after eating products from one production line at the Blue Bell creamery in Brenham, Texas.

Mourners pack teenager’s funeral

MADISON, Wis. – Hundreds of mourners packed a Wisconsin high school field house and spilled into a secondary gym on Saturday to remember a 19-year-old bi-racial man fatally shot last weekend by a white officer, the latest of a string of killings by police nationwide that have stirred racial passions.

Tony Robinson, whose mother is white and father black, died March 6 after what Madison police said was a confrontation in which he assaulted the officer. A preliminary autopsy showed Robinson was shot in his head, torso and right arm. The autopsy did not say if he was facing or turned away from the officer, who was identified as a 45-year-old veteran of the force, Matt Kenny.

Under a new Wisconsin law that requires an outside agency to look into fatal police shootings, a state agency has stepped in to investigate.

Robinson’s death followed sometimes violent protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after an unarmed black man was fatally shot there last August by a white police officer. This week, two policemen were injured from gunfire during one of the demonstrations that have continued for months in front of the Ferguson Police Department.

Associated Press