CAMDEN, NJ (RNN) – A 60-year-old father is hospitalized in intensive care after his family says he contracted flesh-eating bacteria while crabbing in a New Jersey river.
Doctors say Angel Perez, 60, developed necrotizing fasciitis, caused by a variety of Vibrio bacteria. The father is now in the ICU at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, NJ, according to NJ Advance Media.
Perez’s daughter, Dilena Perez-Dilan, says her father is an avid crabber. She says hours after he went crabbing near the Maurice River on July 2, his right leg began to swell then quickly got worse.
“It turned brown, blackish color. It was swelling, it was blistered,” Perez-Dilan told WPVI.
According to Perez’s family, it only took a few hours for the infection to spread to all four of his limbs, turning his skin raw and red with blisters and scarring.
“He is in critical condition,” Perez-Dilan told NJ Advance Media. “The infection has spread to his blood…his skin; you can see it spreading from his feet all the way above his kneecap. His forearms are black in color; they have blisters, cuts and sores.”
FoodWorld 