‘My five-year-old son died with E.coli after eating infected meat at school. He would have been 21 this year’

Wales Online

Sharon Jeffreys dreads this time of year.

As children return for the start of the school year, she relives what happened to her family 15 years ago over and over, and over again.

It was only two weeks into the start of the school year at Deri Primary in 2005 when her eldest son Chandler came home with stomach pains and the beginning of a nightmare for the young family.

Chandler had contracted E.coli O157 after eating contaminated food that had been supplied to the school by a local butcher.

But worse was to come after his younger brother Mason also became ill with the food poisoning.

The five-year-old had only just switched from taking packed lunches to having school dinners because he was so fond of chips and sausages.

“It was the worse decision I ever made,” says Sharon. “Mason loved his food. He was taking sausages and chips off the plates of children, so we decided to switch him to school dinners and he was really happy.”

Mason and eight-year-old Chandler were two of more than 150 schoolchildren and adults struck down in the south Wales outbreak. Thirty-one people were admitted to hospital, but Mason was the only one to die.