posted 08-02-2002 02:13 AM               

Their son died a week ago on his 15th birthday, and Scott and Monica Beeman still don't know why.

Neither do the four agencies investigating the Ahwatukee Foothills boy's death and the illnesses of more than 10 people, all of whom golfed at south Phoenix golf courses within three days of each other.

One theory is heatstroke killed Nils Beeman.

Investigators also are looking into the water he drank. The death could be related to acne medicine.

But a week's worth of questions has brought no answers to why an apparently healthy teenager would die.

Preliminary tests on the water at Thunderbirds Golf Club and the Raven golf course have been negative for heavy metals and pesticides.

No results have come back yet for bacteria or viral components in the water, said Laura Devany, a spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Environmental Services Department.

The toxicology report by the medical examiner, which will give insight into Nils' death, will be back next week."It has just been hell. We want to figure out what happened and why it happened, and hopefully no other kids will get sick or die," Scott Beeman said Friday.

Beeman found Nils on the floor of the family's bathroom shortly before 5 a.m. July 19.

He tried to pry his son's jaw open to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The Guadalupe Fire Department couldn't revive him.

And that quickly, the boy who had the day before played golf with his dad, was dead. They were going to play golf again that day for his birthday.

"He was fine when I got home. He didn't wake us up when he got sick. I wish he had," Beeman said.

Nine people who played in or watched a Junior Golf Association of Arizona tournament at several Phoenix golf courses on July 18 and 19 reported being sick with flulike symptoms, such as nausea, light fever and dizziness, despite playing at separate courses.

Nils played in a tournament July 17 at Thunderbirds and July 18 at the Raven.

The working diagnosis for those who were sick is "heat prostration," Devany said.Kathy Scheib's 13-year-old son, Nicholas, was also at the golf tournament.

"We were watching TV a little before 9 Tuesday night when Nicholas started to look a little pale," Scheib said. "After a few minutes, he got up and went into the bathroom and threw up a lot. . . . I tried to give him Gatorade and water through the night, but he couldn't keep it down."

"I don't know much," said Thunderbirds Golf Club general manager Brad Kirkman. "Everybody I talked to just wants to know what happened. And nobody knows. I hope they hurry up and find out."

Kirkman replaced water jugs and ice that are scattered at every third hole at the county's recommendation.

Scott Beeman isn't so sure Nils' death is heat-related. The son who dreamed of becoming a professional golfer often played on hot summer days and always drank plenty of water. "Our whole life just ended. Nils was our whole life," said his dad, pausing for a breath. "He loved golf. I kept teasing him that I was going to take up tennis because he kept kicking my butt."

More than 200 people turned out Thursday for Beeman's funeral. Nils was a sophomore at Mountain Pointe High School in Ahwatukee Foothills and played varsity golf. He shot in the low 40s and wanted his handicap to be in single digits, not 10. He was a straight-A student and just got his first B this past year.

"Nils was really an outgoing person, and he always made people around him laugh. He was always telling jokes. He was just fun to be around," said Amanda Van Vienen, 15, his friend and a sophomore at Mountain Pointe. "It's kind of scary that they really don't know what happened."

The high school golf team will dedicate its season to the memory of Nils. They carried his casket Thursday. If only they knew why they had to.
http://www.arizonarepublic.com/arizona/articles/0727teendeath27.html

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More illness found after teen's death

Golf attendees' malady baffling

By Judd Slivka

The Arizona Republic
Aug. 01, 2002 12:00:00

PHOENIX - The number of people who turned up sick after playing at two south Phoenix golf courses in early July has risen to more than 30.

A 15-year-old Ahwatukee Foothills boy died after attending a tournament at the Thunderbirds Golf Club, and authorities have no clue as to what killed him or caused the sicknesses.

Preliminary toxicology reports on Nils Beeman, who died July 19, showed nothing, Maricopa County spokesman Al Macias said.

"It's a situation where, since it showed nothing, they have to go back and do more tests," he said of the Maricopa County Medical Examiner's office.

So far, county and state health officials investigating the case have ruled out only the presence of heavy metals and pesticides in the water of the Thunderbirds Golf Club and The Raven golf course.

County officials will not give out official numbers of how many people at the golf courses fell ill, but a Republic analysis of records puts the number at more than 30."The good news is that no one has come down with these type of symptoms that fit this category since July 25," said Doug Hauth, spokesman for the county Department of Public Health.

As some of the tests on the golf courses' water have come out negative, the investigation is beginning to focus on human factors: Were any golf course employees sick before or during the junior tournament?

Authorities have interviewed 115 people so far, some of them employees, Macias said.

posted 08-23-2002 09:22 PM               

Judd Slivka
The Arizona Republic
Aug. 11, 2002

Reservations at the Thunderbirds Golf Course in south Phoenix have been slumping since a 15-year-old boy died and about 40 people got sick after golfing there last month.

"The straight skinny is that individual show-up-and-play reservations are down a lot," said Scott Henderson, Big Chief of the Thunderbirds.

The course opened earlier this year to support the Phoenix First Tee program, a national effort to get inner-city kids playing golf and learning life skills. After it opened, Sports Illustrated named it one of the 10 best public golf courses in the nation. In the renaissance of south Phoenix, the golf course is a major part.

But the recent unsolved death of Ahwautukee Foothills resident Nils Beeman a day after playing at the course and a spate of mysterious illnesses are taking their toll.

There are no numbers from last year with which to compare, so all the evidence is anecdotal. And separating a decline in reservations due to bad publicity from the illnesses from the normal August slump is impossible.Still, numbers are down.

The slump shouldn't affect the Thunderbirds' other operations, such as the Phoenix Open, Henderson said, because the golf course is set up as a separate entity. And no major payments on the course's debt service are due for several years."We'll get through this," he said, "but the publicity is killing us.

"No health problems of the kind that sickened the golfers have been reported since July 25. Beeman was found to have choked to death the morning of July 19.

http://www.azcentral.com/health/0811TBIRDS11.html

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Golfers had Norwalk Virus

Maricopa County health officials say several of the golfers who became sick after playing at two Phoenix-area courses last month caught a common stomach virus after drinking unsanitary water. But the death of the teen-age golfer still is unsolved.

At a news conference in Phoenix today, health officials say they found no signs of the Norwalk virus in samples taken from the body of 15-year-old Nils Beeman.

They say the samples were consistent with the virus but other tests still pending.

Beeman became ill after playing July 18 in the Junior Golf Association of Arizona tournament and died at his home the next day.

The county Medical Examiner's Office says Beeman choked to death on his own vomit.

More than 80 golfers who played during the July 15th through July 22nd period became sick to their stomach after playing at Thunderbirds Golf Club.

Officials say water handling, ice handling and hand-washing practices were substandard at the golf courses they examined.

Story Posted: 08-14-2002 at 3:22 PM MST

Last Modified: 08-14-2002 at 3:41 PM MST

http://www.12news.com/headline/NorwalkVirus081402.html

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Golf tourney ills tied to virus, water

By Judd Slivka
The Arizona Republic
Aug. 15, 2002 12:00:00

The 82 people who became sick after a golf tournament in south Phoenix last month are believed to have contracted nothing more exotic than a common stomach virus, Maricopa County health officials said Wednesday.

But an investigation spurred by the illnesses and the death of a 15-year-old Ahwatukee Foothills boy uncovered a new, widespread health threat: 65 percent of golf courses in the county inspected by health officials in the past few weeks had the same inadequate water-handling practices that led to the outbreak.

The people who got sick July 16-25 after a youth golf tournament at the Thunderbirds Golf Course contracted a Norwalk-type virus. It is similar to the illness that sickened scores of people on river trips through the Grand Canyon earlier this summer.

Officials believe the virus was spread through contaminated water and ice in the golf course's coolers.

Three of eight stool samples from people who got sick tested positive for the virus at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lab, said Dr. Jonathan Weisbuch, director of the Maricopa County Public Health Department.

Tissue samples from Nils Beeman, the 15-year-old who was found dead in his parents' bathroom July 19 after several days of golfing, did not test positive for the virus.

"That doesn't mean that he didn't have it," Weisbuch said. "It just means they couldn't find it."

The water-spread "golfer's sickness" is a first for county health officials and perhaps in the nation. There is no medical literature describing anything like this happening on the links.

"We never even considered golf courses might be a problem," Weisbuch said.

Once county health officials suspected that water and ice in coolers were to blame, they embarked on a survey of the 157 golf courses in the county.

Through Wednesday, 148 courses had been inspected; only 35 percent of them had in place the safe water-handling procedures released by county officials last week.

The guidelines included disinfecting water containers every day; filling containers and coolers away from contaminants such as dust and insects; and making sure that water and ice come from municipal water systems or a health department-approved filtration system.

Some of the requirements are simple things, such as not using a garden hose or a hose that had been on the ground to fill water containers.

"We had some facilities out there that were severely challenged," said Dave Ludwig, manager of the county's environmental health division.

All of the courses that weren't approved began immediately changing their practices. Those that were approved had bottled water, drinking fountains or a sanitary water system already in place.

More lab tests are pending for Beeman, although the county medical examiner has ruled that the immediate cause of death was choking on his own vomit.

The first recorded case of the virus at the golf course came from a course employee on July 16. Officials said they weren't sure if he contaminated the water supply or if he merely drank contaminated water.

"Did the employee get sick after drinking the water, or did he make other people sick? We'll never know," Weisbuch said.

http://www.arizonarepublic.com/news/articles/0815teendeath15.html

posted 08-23-2002 10:01 PM               

quote:

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The people who got sick July 16-25 after a youth golf tournament at the Thunderbirds Golf Course contracted a Norwalk-type virus. It is similar to the illness that sickened scores of people on river trips through the Grand Canyon earlier this summer.

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By Judd Slivka
The Arizona Republic
June 20, 2002

They were the trips of lifetimes, days spent plowing through rapids and nights camping beneath the Grand Canyon's walls.

Right up until people started getting sick.

In the first two weeks of June, 59 river rafters in the Grand Canyon came down with some kind of illness that had them sick to their stomachs for a day or two.

Officials with the National Park Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are trying to figure out what is happening on the Colorado River.

The virus is probably a member of the Norwalk family of viruses, said Chuck Higgins, the Park Service's regional medical services director. Included in that group of viruses are several that typically look like stomach flu.

The virus first showed up June 1 at River Mile 164, just above the Hualapai Reservation. By June 14, it was showing up far downriver at National Canyon near Lake Mead. There's no pattern: Cases have surfaced on four outfitters' trips and one private boat trip.

"We don't know if it was from people drinking river water, not chlorinating it enough, standing under a waterfall with their mouths open," Higgins said.

The outbreak is similar to, although more severe than, viral episodes on the river in 1994 and 2001 that resulted in new reporting procedures for illnesses on the river.

Six people from the state and the Park Service are working on the case, and the CDC is trying to determine how people contracted the virus. Airborne transmission seems to be one possibility.