Son in milk-shake poisoning case sentenced

 

Son gets jail in attacks on man in milk-shake poisoning case No one can say Gilbert Ortiz isn't a survivor. In 1992, his wife poisoned him with an insecticide-laced milk shake. Ortiz nearly died. Nearly two decades later, his son - nursing a grudge over his mother's imprisonment - assaulted him. Twice. On Wednesday, a judge ordered the son, 21-year-old Jonathan Ortiz, to spend a year in jail and four years on probation. The unusual case began in March 1992, when Elizabeth Fuentes-Ortiz brought a McDonald's hamburger and a milk shake to her husband while he was working at Toys R Us in Redwood City. She told him the shake might taste funny because it was filled with amino acids to help him build muscles. In fact, the shake had been laced with Ortho Sevin, an insecticide. Ortiz went into convulsions 10 seconds after downing the concoction in the store's break room, police say. His heart stopped, his liver failed and he lapsed into a coma that lasted 11 days. But he survived and told police what had happened. By then, his wife had already made it to Mexico with Jonathan, then 2, in tow. In 2000, Fuentes-Ortiz was arrested near Guadalajara. She was convicted two years later of attempted murder and was sentenced to 13 years to life in prison. On June 25, 2010, Jonathan Ortiz stabbed his father, "screaming about what he had done to (Jonathan's) mother," said San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. The son took the wounded man to the hospital, where Gilbert Ortiz "made up a story about being robbed at knifepoint," Wagstaffe said. Then, on Oct. 17, 2010, Jonathan Ortiz attacked his father again, this time beating him, prosecutors said. The father again concocted a story that he had been attacked during a robbery. But a relative contacted police and revealed what really happened, Wagstaffe said. Jonathan Ortiz claimed self-defense. In September, he pleaded no contest to felony assault.