Tijuana Rite Gas Accident Claims Its 13th Victim

A 45-year-old Tijuana mother has become the 13th person to die of asphyxiation from carbon monoxide gas during a religious ceremony last week at an unventilated home, authorities said.

The victim, Consuelo Ponce Ramirez, a mother of eight, died in her hospital bed at 4 a.m. Thursday, said Dr. Ariel Perez Munoz, director of the Social Security Clinic 20, where she and other survivors were being treated. She had been in a coma for a week.

Her daughter, Consuelo Moreno Ponce, 14, was among 12 victims found dead in the home on Dec. 13 after a prayer session held by a self-styled spiritualist. The mother and four others, including the group’s leader, were found alive and were hospitalized.

Hospital authorities now say that a man believed to have been a sixth survivor was actually suffering from an unrelated illness.

The spiritualist, Federico Padres Mexia, a retired cement mason who lived for many years in Southern California but settled in Tijuana last summer, remains in a deep coma and is not expected to recover, the hospital official said.

Of the three other initial survivors, one man, 32, remains in a coma at a private hospital and two others--a 22-year-old Tijuana resident and his niece, age 4 months--recovered and were released from the Social Security clinic this week.

Authorities have said that autopsy results and the findings of toxicological tests indicate that the victims were stricken by carbon monoxide gas, an odorless, poisonous byproduct of the incomplete burning of fossil fuels. Investigators have traced the gas to a hand-rigged butane lantern that provided light at the house. Doors and windows were shut tight during the chilly evening service, preventing the entry of fresh air.

However, coroner’s officials in Tijuana are still awaiting a final analysis of the samples, which were submitted to the office of the medical examiner in San Diego County.

“We have definitely established that this was an accident,” said Victor Vasquez, the deputy Baja California district attorney who is handling the investigation. “For me there is no question that carbon monoxide poisoning provoked the deaths.”