La Jolla
A former chemist at a La Jolla pharmaceutical company who spiked an employees’ coffee pot with a neurotoxic chemical was sentenced Wednesday to four years in state prison for probation violation.
Joseph Bohn, 30, of Mission Beach was originally sentenced last year to five years’ probation and one year in County Jail for his guilty pleas to administering a poison by using the potentially lethal chemical acrylamide in two separate spikings, in 1982 and 1983, at Quidel Corp.
But Bohn was convicted in federal court several months ago of two counts of using a telephone during a conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine. U.S. District Judge Judith Keep sentenced him to three years in federal prison Oct. 15.
San Diego Superior Court Judge Raul Rosado ordered Bohn’s four-year term to run consecutively with his three-year sentence, making Bohn’s total sentence seven years.
One of the conditions of probation agreed to by Bohn as a result of his conviction in the coffee pot case was that he obey all laws.
On March 7, 1983, three people at the Quidel Corporation drank coffee and became ill. They were David Katz, chief executive and chairman of the board; John Fosberg, company president, and Lucy Gunnill, an administrative assistant.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
