After seeing reports on KATU TV, the family of a 3-year-old girl who got sick from E. coli is convinced that the case is connected to another case of E. coli that killed 4-year-old Serena Profitt on Monday. Both children were in the same general area just before they got sick.

Serena swam in a section of the South Santiam River in Linn County. Then Aubrie Utter had her birthday at Waterloo Park about 20 minutes away and a few feet from a section of that river. They used a water fountain to fill up water balloons.

Aubrie’s birthday party was Saturday, Aug. 23, and her mother, Katie Hendricks, said her daughter was sick that very night.
“During the middle of the night, she woke up crying (that) her stomach hurt. She had diarrhea,” Katie said.

She brought her daughter to a clinic in Albany and just like with Serena she said they thought it was a minor virus and sent her home. But she just kept getting worse, and her mother brought her back in and demanded they do a blood test.

Two hours later they confirmed Aubrie had E. coli, and she was rushed to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland, just two doors down from Serena. Aubrie was hospitalized for a full week and underwent five blood transfusions. She recovered but Serena did not.

Now, Katie has a message for other parents.

“I want the public to know,” she said. “You got to push doctors. If they tell you, ‘No, go home,’ – push it, ask for blood work, because my daughter wouldn’t be here today if I wouldn’t have done that.”
A KATU reporter called the Linn County Health Department to see what it is doing about this possible connection. The reporter was told that this was the first it had heard about it.