“No,” he is said to have replied, “it was the chip.”
That morning, Harris had eaten a Paqui “One Chip Challenge” product, a single tortilla chip wrapped in a coffin-shaped box and coated with a powder made from the world’s hottest chili peppers, the lawsuit alleges. Harris died hours after his visit to the nurse’s office.
The wrongful death lawsuit filed by his parents accuses Paqui and his parent companies — Amplify Snack Brands and Hershey Co. — of creating a dangerously spicy product and aggressively marketing it to children through a viral social media campaign. In the complaint filed in Suffolk County Superior Court, Lois and Amos Wolobah also accuse Walgreens, the retailer that sold the chip, of making the product easily available to children.
Paqui, Amplify and Hershey did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post on Thursday. Walgreens declined to comment on the Wolobahs’ claims.
Douglas Sheff, the Wolobahs’ lawyer, said the chips were so dangerous that no one should have eaten them.
“This product should never have been available to adults, let alone children. It should never have been on the shelves,” Sheff said at a news conference Thursday. “What do they do? They kept pushing it and pushing it — until poor Harris died.”
In advertising the product, Paqui boasted that last year’s One Chip Challenge chips were coated in spices made from “two of the hottest peppers available today,” the Carolina Reaper and the Naga Viper. Both were at various times ranked as the world’s hottest peppers, according to Guinness World Records, with the Carolina Reaper and Naga Viper registering around 2.2 million and 1.3 million Scoville heat units, respectively, beating the jalapeño’s 2,500 to 8,000 units.
Harris’ friend purchased the One Chip Challenge product at a Walgreens in their hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts, on Aug. 31, the lawsuit says. The next morning, the friend took several chips to school, where Harris and several other students allegedly ate varying amounts of the chips together and posted videos of themselves eating them on social media.
After Harris became ill, he went to his teacher for help and was taken to the nurse’s office in a wheelchair, the complaint said. School officials told his mother he was sick, and his parents picked him up and took him home, the complaint said.
That afternoon, Harris went to his room after becoming ill again, the complaint said. His mother reportedly noticed him breathing abnormally shortly afterward and called 911. Harris passed out again and stopped breathing, the complaint said, and although first responders took him to a hospital, doctors were unable to revive him.
In an interview with Boston-based TV station WBZ in September, the Wolobahs blamed the chip for their son’s death and called for it to be banned. Less than a week after Harris died, Paqui pulled the One Chip Challenge chips from store shelves.
A coroner determined in February that Harris’ death was caused by cardiac arrest “in the context of recent ingestion of a food with a high capsaicin concentration,” Elaine Driscoll, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, said in May, as the findings began to draw national attention.
The autopsy report noted that Harris had “cardiomegaly and myocardial bridging of the left anterior descending coronary artery” — an enlarged heart and a congenital heart defect, Driscoll said. But Sheff said at Thursday’s news conference that Harris would have had “a normal, healthy life with a normal life expectancy” if he had not eaten the chip.
In May, a Paqui spokeswoman said the company had worked with retailers to pull the One Chip Challenge chips from shelves in September and that the product was no longer being supplied.
“We were and remain deeply saddened by the passing of Harris Wolobah and extend our condolences to his family and friends,” spokeswoman Kim Metcalfe said at the time, adding that the challenge was “intended for adults only … the product was not intended for children or those with sensitivities to spicy foods or underlying health conditions.”
But Paqui already knew the One Chip Challenge was dangerous, the lawsuit says, citing warnings on the product including: “Keep out of reach of children” and “Do not eat if you are sensitive to spicy foods, allergic to peppers, nightshades or capsaicin, or are pregnant or have any medical conditions.”
Before Harris died, there had been several situations in which students at schools in California, New Mexico and Texas had eaten the chips and subsequently required medical attention.
Despite those incidents, children still had easy access to the chips, the lawsuit alleges. Paqui encouraged children to eat them by promoting the One Chip Challenge on TikTok and other social media sites, urging people to eat a chip and wait as long as possible before eating or drinking to ease the pain, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also alleges that the Walgreens store did nothing to limit children’s access to the product. Employees did not lock up the chips or put them on employee-only shelves, but allowed children to freely pick them off the shelves and buy them, the lawsuit says.
Sheff said Harris’ parents filed a lawsuit to protect other children.
“The Wolobahs want to send a message, not just to Paqui and Hershey, but to anyone who would put our children in danger,” he said.
Maham Javaid contributed to this report.