Family of teen who died after ‘One Chip Challenge’ sues snack company

“No,” he allegedly responded, “it was the chip.”

That morning, Harris had eaten a Paqui “One Chip Challenge” product, a single tortilla chip packaged in a coffin-shaped box and caked in powder made from the spiciest chile peppers in the world, the lawsuit says. Hours after his visit to the nurse’s office, Harris died.

The wrongful-death lawsuit filed by his parents accuses Paqui and its parent companies — Amplify Snack Brands and the Hershey Co. — of making 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 Thursday to a request for comment from The Washington Post. Walgreens declined to comment on the Wolobahs’ allegations.

Douglas Sheff, an attorney for the Wolobahs, said the chips were so dangerous that no one should have been eating them.

“This product should never have been available to adults, let alone children. It should never have been out on the shelves,” Sheff said Thursday at a news conference. “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 covered in seasoning made from “two of the hottest peppers currently available,” the Carolina Reaper and the Naga Viper. Each was ranked at different times as the world’s hottest pepper, according to Guinness World Records, and the Carolina Reaper and the Naga Viper can register at about 2.2 million and 1.3 million Scoville heat units, respectively, dwarfing the jalapeño’s 2,500 to 8,000 units.

Harris’s friend bought the One Chip Challenge product on Aug. 31 from a Walgreens in their town of Worcester, Mass., the lawsuit says. The next morning, the friend brought several chips to school, where Harris and several other students allegedly ate varying amounts of the chips together and posted videos of themselves doing so to social media.

After Harris got sick, he went to his teacher for help and was taken to the nurse’s office in a wheelchair, according to the suit. School officials told his mother that he was ill, and his parents retrieved him and brought him home, the lawsuit says.

That afternoon, Harris went to his room after becoming sick again, the suit states. His mother allegedly found him breathing abnormally a short time later and called 911. Harris passed out again and stopped breathing, according to the suit, and although EMTs 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 pushed for it to be banned. Less than a week after Harris died, Paqui pulled the One Chip Challenge chips from store shelves.

A medical examiner determined in February that Harris’s death was caused by cardiac arrest “in the setting of recent ingestion of a food substance with high capsaicin concentration,” Elaine Driscoll, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, said in May, when the findings started attracting national attention.

The autopsy report noted that Harris had a “cardiomegaly and myocardial bridging of the left anterior descending coronary artery” — an enlarged heart and a congenital heart condition, 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 hadn’t eaten the chip.

In May, a spokeswoman for Paqui said the company had worked with retailers to remove the One Chip Challenge chips from store shelves in September and had discontinued the product.

“We were and remain deeply saddened by the death 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 for children or anyone sensitive to spicy foods or with underlying health conditions.”

But Paqui already knew the One Chip Challenge was dangerous, according to the lawsuit, which cites warning labels on the product, including, “Keep out of the reach of children” and “Do not eat if you are sensitive to spicy foods, allergic to peppers, night shades or capsaicin, or are pregnant or have any medical conditions.”

Before Harris died, there had been several situations in which students had eaten the chips and then required medical attention while at schools in California, New Mexico and Texas.

Despite those incidents, children still had easy access to the chips, the suit alleges. Paqui encouraged children to eat them by promoting the One Chip Challenge on TikTok and other social media sites, goading people to eat a chip and wait as long as possible before eating or drinking something to ease the pain, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit also alleges that the Walgreens store did nothing to restrict children’s access to the product. The staff didn’t lock up the chips or stash them on shelves only accessible to employees, but allowed children to freely grab them from shelves and purchase them, the suit states.

Sheff said Harris’s parents are suing to help protect other children.

“The Wolobahs want to send a message, not just to Paqui and to Hershey, but to all who would endanger our children,” he said.

Maham Javaid contributed to this report.