Raw Terror | S1 E13 | Forensic Files | FULL EPISODE | Forensic Files

in the spring of 1991 a group of Boy Scouts spent the weekend in the woods hoping to earn
merit badges for survival in the wilderness but just 10 days later one of the scouts Damien heyn was fighting for
his own Survival as he lay near death in a hospital doctors wanted to find the cause
and they also needed to find a cure [Music] [Music] the hear SN family have a quiet active
life in the small town of Dothan Alabama Marx heyn is a busy eye surgeon and he met his wife Mary while he was in
medical school the heyn family soon grew to include four children three boys Damian Sebastian Bane and a daughter
named Mila all intelligent active and healthy about a week after Damen heyn returned from The Voice Scout trip his
mother prepared to take Damian and his brother to Florida Daman was headed to space camp and Sebastian was going to
tennis camp Sebastian and his mother packed the van because Damian wasn't feeling well he had a slight fever and
some diarrhea his parents thought it might have been the pizza Damen ate at a friend's house or perhap perhaps it was
just a virus going through Damian's school and like you respond to all of those kinds of bugs and little illnesses
as a as a parent you think okay I'm going to fix it Mary packed anti-diarrheal medicine and some drinks
to replenish the fluids and they headed to Florida intending to drive straight through the night Damian's symptoms
didn't respond to the medicine and they were forced to make frequent stops on the trip if became apparent that he was
dealing with something more complicated than a flu Mary decided it was best to stop for the night and let Damian rest
then we went through a night where he just lived in the bathroom back and forth uh the hotel room uh all night
using the bathroom and the next morning I woke up thinking okay it was one of those weird things we're okay let's go
on our way get to space camp get to tennis camp the next day day Daman was no better in fact as his mother drove
towards Tampa she noticed that Damian was getting worse she was really getting pretty worried that Daman was uh really
pretty sick that he had uh pretty frankly lot of diarrhea and there was some blood in
it they drove to a local hospital where x-ray showed his intestines were swollen
the news was not good additional test showed that there were deadly toxins collecting in Damian's blood evidence
that his kidneys were shutting down it needs to be very carefully watched because it could be the start of
something disastrous doctors didn't know what was causing Damian's Illness but if
the problem wasn't identified quickly Damian would die as daman's condition worsened he was
quickly transferred to a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at another hospital when the diarrhea turned to hemorrhaging
it was like literally all hell was breaking loose now it just poured out of and it wasn't so much diarrhea as it was
just Hemorrhage just pan after pan of clotted uh blood pouring out of them Damian's red blood
cells were being destroyed and his kidneys were shutting down tests showed that he was was suffering from a rare
life-threatening condition called hemolytic ureic syndrome or hus although his father was a doctor it
was a disease he had never heard of I didn't know what this disease was so I fortunately had some books with me Etc
and I looked it up and I really realized that this was a uh this is a bad disease
Terry shoes was the first nurse who cared for Damian we all knew in our hearts what might happen and when we
were sure it was hemolytic heric syndrome that's when the fear set in and we knew we had to become very aggressive
H is caused by a lethal bacteria one which creates a toxin a chemical poison that attacks the blood vessels and the
blood it triggers a deadly Cascade of Events first red blood cells are shredded the blood loses its clotting
ability but at the same time the broken cells Clump together creating a life-threatening dam in the bloodstream
and when the clump reach vital organs it deprives them of blood and oxygen Damian's parents read all they could
about this mysterious blood disease desperate to find out what caused it Mary poured over the medical literature
she learned that hus is usually linked to contaminated food but no one else in the family had gotten sick could it be
the pizza Daman had at a friend's house what about the Boy Scout trip was the bacteria in the water or was it
something in the food I needed to get on the phone call home nobody in our town was aware of what kind of trouble Damian
was in at that point call the scoutm and and ask him was anybody else sick because that became my concern is
that there were other kids who may have been poisoned Mary was surprised and confused by the
answer none of the other boy scouts were sick how on Earth can this child fall into this deep whole with no explanation
the source of Damian's illness remained a mystery but its severity was becoming all too clear Dr Daniel Placencia led a
team of doctors who would try to keep Damian alive it was affecting different organs and that process kind of put him
in the severe category onto the stomach doctors told Mary about hus and its unpredictability that it launches random
attacks on the body's critical organs creating deadly complications without warning and there was little doctors
could do to stop it and you realize he could die it's an impossible thought for someone like me for most parents and at
that point uh the doctors told me that there was really nothing that you could do that we just had to watch cross our
fingers wait and hope that this Beast didn't take a lethal hit on on one of Damian's major organ systems Damian's
condition worsened by the minute blood test showed that his system was overflowing with toxins Damian needed
dialysis to cleanse his blood just to stay alive then in the middle of the night I got a phone call from Mary
saying that uh it's really to a point where you need to come dialysis kept Daman alive but the disease was raging
like a fire through his body as a doctor Marx understood the test results and he
knew his son was dying he was in a very bad downward spiral every turn seemed to be on the
downside I was really seeing the actual disease take its ravaging effects on him
right before our eyes and X-rays showed that fluid was collecting around daman's
heart more than a liter of fluid was siphoned away allowing his heart to beat more freely but a few hours later his
parents were in his room when tragedy struck help us we need help without warning Damian's blood pressure went
into a free fall the hear sinks were watching their son die before their very eyes Damen started to shake and convulse
and turn blue and he was dying and it is so terrifying that you you just are reduced
to begging God to let your child live for one more minute there was a frantic effort to restore daman's blood pressure
before it damaged his heart or brain we gave him extra fluid intravenously we must have given him half a liter to a
liter of fluid to restore his fluid volume gradually his blood pressure increased and Damian survived a brush
with death but the disease had only begun to reveal its power the hear sinks agonized what caused this terrible
tragedy to happen to their son and why wasn't there a [Music] treatment while Damian lay near death in
a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit his father desperately searched for answers he called an old friend from medical
school who specializes in blood disorders John uh heyn here from medical school they hadn't spoken in nearly 10
years but Marx was desperate so my in personal feeling was that the doctors here are very good but they don't see
this very often Marx began to describ the symptoms to his friend but before he could finish Dr Kelton knew the
diagnosis I knew what he had in two sentences on a telephone John Kelton had spent his entire career studying rare
blood diseases many doctors had never seen and he knew from his experience that the worst wasn't over in subsequent
telephone calls it became apparent to me and of considerable concern to me that Damian was moving from this localized
illness called hemolytic ureic syndrome into the far more severe illness called thrombotic thrombocytopenic perpus Dr k
knew something the local doctors did not there was only one thing that would keep
Damian alive a risky unproven treatment many doctors believed was too experimental it was called a plasma
exchange what it is doing is washing out toxic substances from the bloodstream the massive transfusions would mean
additional risks a possible HIV or hepatitis infection but Dr Kelton knew that the greater risk was not doing
anything I emphasized that when I've known of similar patients who did not receive
treatment they invariably worsened and the outcome was death once the daily plasma exchanges started
Damian's condition began to improve and I could see that in my judgment toxins and poisons and really awful things were
being suctioned out of his body meanwhile Mary hn continued to educate herself on hemolytic ureic syndrome and
the bacteria that caused it 96 to 98% of the cases of hus are caused by this new
lethal microbe exploding in our food supply this is the bacteria it's called eoli
0157 watch and you can see how one bacteria can multiply and become a deadly threat epidemiologists can trace
it back only as far as the early 1970s but it's already the leading cause of kidney failure in American children
it kills 500 people in the United States each year most of them children somehow
the eoli bacteria entered Damian's system and triggered the horrible blood disorder Damian probably ingested the
deadly bacteria about a week to 10 days earlier a single bacterium could have ignited the chain of events wildly
multiplying in the warm moist recesses of Damian's intestines but where did it come from
contaminated water meat unpasturized juice and if it happened while he was on the Scout camping trip why weren't any
of the other Scouts infected before doctors knew if the plasma therapy would work the disease struck again
an echocardiogram revealed that Damian's heart was still under attack they have to go in and pull off this fluid which
is accumulating around his heart in in essence drowning him now drastic measures would be needed to keep Damian
alive he needed more heart surgery if something isn't done then the heart will eventually stop was the plasma exchange
started too late to Halt the damage to his internal organs his doctors and nurses weren't sure it was really hard
it was because you just can't let kids die without a fight Damian did fight and he survived the heart surgery soon Daman
started to show some improvement the plasma exchanges continued Damian could breathe on his own but the disease Was
preparing another deadly assault on his weakened body it started innocently enough he was so thirsty he was just
really dying to get some fluids in and we started with a little bit of fluid and then Mama went to get him some ice
drink that she' promised him when Damen took a few sips disaster [Music] struck an excruciating abdominal pain
overwhelmed him and Marx was certain at that moment that we had another catastrophe x-rays confirmed
mx's worst fears the disease had blown a hole in Damian's intestines poisonous bacteria were now being released into
his body and Damian would need emergency surgery is the first time I think I really accepted that Damian could and
would die and you know I had to get ready now for him to die that this is going to be the end the anesthesia the
surgery the bacteria pouring from his intestines any one of these were enough to kill Damian he had uh very little to
fight with you refuse to lose your hope though but you get this Grim feeling inside like you just don't know if you
can do any more for them Damian's parents and his doctors didn't know if he could survive another
battle how did did the deadly eoli bacteria enter Damian Hearn was it from the water at Boy Scout camp or was the
bacteria in the food and if it was something he ate at Boy Scout camp why weren't any of the other boys sick told
surprisingly the answer came from Daman himself it came to him in a dream as he lay in the
[Music] hospital it happened at Scout camp it was my job to make hamburger patties and
we cooked them on a grill over the campfire we stacked them up on a tray and I went up to the table to get one I
was really hungry and I saw a small piece of meat on the plate it was just a tiny piece which looked like it fell off
one of the burgers I was so hungry that I grabbed the piece and ate it I knew there was a problem it was cold it
looked like it was CED but it was almost raw all my friends were around I didn't
want just spit it out in front of him so I just swallowed it when Damen woke up after his dream he told his father what
happened but he independently came to the realization and reported it almost as a confessional to his dad that I know
it made me sick Dad it was when I swallowed that I knew that was wrong something was wrong about that that's
what made me sick thoroughly cooking hamburger usually kills the eoli bacteria but since Damian ate a piece of
rare meat the ecoli bacteria were multiplying inside his system within minutes of ingestion by the time Damien
left for Space Camp a week later the ecoli bacteria had begun to produce toxins which attacked his vital organs
ironically the medicine Daman took to relieve his diarrhea during the trip probably made his condition worse
because it hindered his body's attempt to flush the bacteria from his system fortunately for Daman the experimental
plasma exchange worked it saved his life by removing the deadly toxins from his bloodstream after 5 weeks in intensive
care seven operations and many agonizing brushes with death Damian survived his war against the deadly eoli bacteria at
the same camping trip that Damian was on other children ate the same food it only
happened to him why did it happen to him well the answer on a trivial level is is
that it was fate but obviously there is something in certain individuals that put them at risk of having this reaction
it's pretty scary just whenever I get a chance to think about it and think about
everything that happened to me I see I'm pretty lucky to be alive right now but others haven't been as fortunate in
1993 an outbreak of Eola at several Jack in the Box restaurants killed three [Music]
people and it left this victim 10-year-old Brienne ker with permanent brain damage and in the summer of
1996 more than 9,000 Japanese school children were infected with the eoli bacteria 11 died eoli bacteria usually
come from the intestines of cattle cow manure with ecoli can get washed into streams and cause contamination and when
manure is used for fertilizer it can contaminate apples which fall to the ground if those same apples are made
into cider and it's not pasteurized The Cider can also be contaminated but the most common method of ecoli infection is
through contaminated ground beef when it isn't properly cooked one study found that 3 and 1/2% of the ground beef sold
in supermarkets was infected with the deadly eoli 0157 and there's also the problem of
cross contamination liquids from tainted ground beef can contaminate other Foods
in a refrigerator or on countertops this was a disease that was unheard of or very very rare even 105 years ago and
it's now in just a DEC become the leading cause of kidney failure in United States children it's
one of the leading causes of pediatric death in certain countries like Argentina Daman heyn's brush with eoli
has not only changed his life but also his families his mother has written a book about daman's story and founded an
international organization dedicated to eliminating eoli from our food supply Damian is one of the the lucky ones
today he's a healthy 16-year-old he plays on the high school basketball team watches his brother's
play on the school football team and is starting to look at colleges whenever I think about everything that happened to
me and everything that could have gone wrong but didn't you know I'm very fortunate he has lost 25% of his lung
capacity and will always be at risk of future kidney problems but his story has continued to to help others Damen is our
Masterpiece he is probably one of our best accomplishments and and successes because he had so many critical problems
and he came out so well I believe that a lot of the things that I have in my life
are because of things other people have done for me and our family and and certainly myself I we have an obligation
to try to make things better for others because what we have is uh we have life we have our son and we have a uh a
wonderful family and we need to be able to give back and that's what we're trying to do just want to say hi to
everybody down in Tampa like Dr placenia all the nurses Terry Sarah Mt all the L nurses they know who
they are and thank you and watch what you eat a [Music]

After a weekend retreat, a Boy Scout's organs start shutting down, leaving doctors puzzled.

Brief Summary

Damian Heyn battled life-threatening HUS after a Boy Scout trip, ultimately surviving through experimental treatments and family advocacy for food safety.

Key points

A Boy Scout's Tragic Illness. Damian Heyn falls critically ill after a camping trip, battling a rare blood disease.
The Mysterious E. Coli Outbreak. Doctors struggle to identify the cause of Damian's illness, leading to a shocking revelation.
A Desperate Fight for Life. Damian's condition worsens, leading to a frantic battle to save his life.
The Power of Experimental Treatment. An unproven treatment offers hope as Damian's condition begins to improve.
A Life Changed Forever. Damian's brush with death leads to a mission to eliminate E. coli from food supplies.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It was like literally all hell was breaking loose.

Describing the severity of Damian's condition.

4:09WatchMar 10, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

More from Forensic Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.