Homeless Man Dies After Overdosing on Farm Pesticides

A 25-year-old homeless man died in Watsonville Community Hospital on Monday morning after he took a bunch of farm pesticides and overdosed, Watsonville Fire officials said. 

The man found the pellets in a plastic bag on the ground Sunday afternoon on a farm in the area of Airport Blvd. and Holohan Rd., according to Watsonville Fire Division Chief Chris Johnson. Wanting to get high off drugs, the man ate the pills, becoming very ill in the parking lot of a Safeway store on Freedom Boulevard, according to a report on KSBW.com.

The man's friend called 911 at 4 p.m. Sunday and paramedics transported him to the Watsonville Community Hospital's emergency room, where he started vomiting.

Johnson said because hospital officials and paramedics didn't know exactly what the man had ingested, they considered creating a decontamination zone. But once they realized that the pellets were a pesticide, they decided not to do so.

Johnson said fire officials are also consulting with the Santa Cruz County environmental health officials to determine "why these fumigants weren't locked up in some sort of container."

The man died sometime after midnight.

"We’ve had some pretty weird calls but this one is really strange," Johnson said. "Normally, your worry is that a child might find something like this – but this was an adult. It's very unusual."