Lethal Spicy Tortilla, 14-year-old from Massachusetts dies after eating one at school

John

By John

A 14-year-old Massachusetts boy dies after eating a “One Chip Challenge” tortilla chip at school, advertised as the spiciest in the world. The family believes that the death was due to complications related to the terrible tortilla. The tortilla chip in question, produced and advertised with a social media campaign marketed as a gastronomic challenge, is sold in a coffin-shaped single-portion box and is seasoned, in the 2023 edition, with a combination of the two most powerful chili peppers that exist: the Carolina Reaper and the Naga Viper, alluded to by the design on the package which depicts a stylized red skull surrounded by a green viper. The packaging is accompanied by the warning that the product can only be consumed by adults and may have consequences on health and by the recommendation to contact a doctor immediately if you feel unwell and not to touch your eyes or other sensitive parts after touching the chips and without washing your hands afterwards. Nonetheless, the One Chip Challenge was banned in one Louisiana county in 2022, when the product was less potent than this year’s. The teenager Harris Wolobah, a promising basketball player at Doherty Memorial High School in Worceste, near Boston, said she ate the One Chip Clallenge offered to her by a schoolmate, with the intention of winning the challenge without eating or drinking. He began to have violent stomach pains and his parents – his mother told Boston’s NBC 10 station, quoted by the New York Post and other media – went to pick him up and accompanied him home, where he felt better. But as soon as he left the house to show up for basketball practice, he passed out. He was found collapsed on the ground and taken to hospital, where he died shortly after from causes that the autopsy will now have to explain. The mother said she is convinced that the cause of the boy’s death was the super-spicy tortilla.