Florida postal worker says Yemen mystery package made him ill

Florida postal worker says Yemen mystery package made him ill

ORLANDO, Fla. â€" A postal worker says a mysterious leaking package from Yemen has left him seriously ill, but the U.S. Postal Service denies the package existed.

The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, in a story printed in Sunday's Miami Herald and the Ledger of Lakeland, reported that Jeffrey A. Lill suffers from extreme fatigue, tremors and liver and neurological problems. The symptoms are consistent with toxic exposure, problems that he said began after he handled the leaking package Feb. 4, 2011, at a sorting facility in Orlando.

The center tracked down co-workers who said that they saw and smelled the package and that Lill, now 44, acted to protect them. The missing package has created a mystery, and determining what was in it, if it existed, could be the key to curing Lill.

"I think they've just been protecting themselves," said George Chuzi, a Washington lawyer helping Lill and his family press the USPS to investigate. "If we're right, they didn't do something they were supposed to do."

The postal service denies that Lill was exposed to a potentially toxic package. Officials declined to comment when contacted by the investigative reporting center, but in a March 9 letter to Chuzi, USPS lawyer Isabel M. Robison acknowledged that a harmless spill had occurred on Feb. 2, 2011. But she said nothing was spilled on Feb. 4, 2011.

Lill and co-workers Paz Oquendo and Yolanda Ocasio tell a different story. Oquendo said she smelled the noxious odor first, which was coming from one of the large mailbags hanging near the package-conveyor belts.

She said she told Lill, the shift supervisor, who ordered about 40 workers out, ventilated the area and removed the package to a hazardous materials area . Lill said that's when his health problems began.

Now, he sleeps 16 hours a day, cannot work and must be cared for by his mother.