Ruben Brown’s efforts to supplement his retirement income as a pest exterminator turned out to be terribly costly, wreaking havoc for dozens of Chicago-area households and creating long-term health concerns for many others.
Taxpayers as well could be out $10 million as a result of Brown’s spraying hundreds of homes on the South and West Sides and neighboring suburbs with a poisonous roach killer.
On Tuesday, Brown, a 62-year-old retired butcher from Bellwood, was sentenced to 2 years in prison, the maximum he could have received under the misdemeanor charges he pleaded guilty to last summer.
Limited by what charges could be brought, authorities had accused Brown of misusing methyl parathion, a toxic pesticide, in violation of the Federal Insecticide Act.
According to Assistant U.S. Atty. Joshua Buchman, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tested 881 residences in which Brown illegally sprayed the roach killer.
Residents in 93 homes had levels of the pesticide in their bodies high enough to require that the homes be gutted and cleaned up. Families had to be relocated during the work.
So far, 40 of the homes have been “decontaminated and restored,” Buchman said.
The work by an army of local, state and federal scientists and technicians has cost $5.2 million to date, Buchman said, and the EPA has set aside an additional $5 million to complete the project.
“I didn’t mean to cause all this, but it happened,” Brown said in federal court during his sentencing. “I’m sorry.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge W. Thomas Rosemond Jr., pointed out the inconvenience, trauma and fear Brown has caused among his former customers.
No one knows what health problems, if any, the illegal spraying could cause, particularly long term, according to Thomas Schafer, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Public Health.
“It is going to be something that is in the back of their minds for the rest of their lives,” Magistrate Rosemond said of the victims’ health concerns. “You probably have no idea the disruption you have caused to these people.”
Brown’s lawyer, Richard Dickinson, has suggested Brown did not fully understand the pesticide’s danger.
But prosecutor Buchman said Brown traveled numerous times to Mississippi to obtain the pesticide, using others’ exterminator licenses to make the purchases.
Methyl parathion, used legally outdoors in cotton fields, remains lethal to bugs for months, even longer when sprayed indoors.
Brown remains free on bond until he is scheduled to surrender to prison on Jan. 20.
