Daughter reveals poison fear

A woman has told how she watched in horror as her father nearly died from eating poisoned meatballs.

Terri Williamson dashed to her parents' home after her mother called to say her father, Dean Williamson, 47, was vomiting and could not move.

Dean was taken to Middlemore Hospital, where doctors first thought he had tried to kill himself.

Terri Williams told the New Zealand Woman's Weekly: "We were told Dad was probably going to die."

After an hour of trying, the doctors found an antidote. Dean had eaten a meatball with 344 times the permitted level of sodium nitrate and eight times the permitted level of sulphur dioxide.

Terri Williamson said she had visited his house and cooked the children some meatballs she found in the fridge. But she threw them in the bin because they tasted so salty. She put the remainder back in the fridge, and they were later eaten by Dean.

The butchery owner who sold the meatballs pleaded guilty at the Manukau District Court to three charges under the Food Act.

The man who made the meatballs could not read English and used a packet labelled "poison" thinking it was seasoning.