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Dania Beach, FL - A man is dead after contracting a bacterial infection from eating a raw oyster at a South Florida restaurant.
Gary Oreal, the manager of the Rustic Inn Crabhouse in Fort Lauderdale, tells the Sun Sentinel the man dined at the restaurant earlier this month and became ill after eating oysters.
Oreal says the restaurant served as many as 100 dozen oysters, but the man was the only one who became sick.
The man's death was traced to the bacteria Vibrio, typically found in raw or undercooked seafood.
Oreal told the Sun Sentinel the victim “had that one in a billion that was bad. I feel horrible.”
Inspectors from the Florida Department of Health examined the oyster inventory the day after the man was hospitalized, but the restaurant passed inspection and was allowed to continue selling oysters.
Neither the restaurant nor the health department identified the man who died.
According to the Florida Department of Health, there have been 26 cases in 2022 of people in Florida who have been infected with the bacterium Vibrio vulnificus.
Six of those 26 people became ill and died.
According to the CDC, about 80,000 people get vibriosis every year in the U.S, resulting in around 100 deaths
Oreal told the Sun Sentinel “over the course of 60 years, we have served a couple billion oysters and we never had anyone get sick like this guy did."