Mother Says Police Investigated Her for Abuse After Baby Fruit Purée Poisoning

The poisoning case involving Frינוק baby fruit purée in Jerusalem is widening, and police are now trying to determine who may have put sedatives into the jars. Yael Biton, whose two daughters were hospitalized more than a month ago, described the episode on 103FM on Thursday, saying the children collapsed after eating just three teaspoons. “It was serious panic,” she said, recalling that she returned home to find the girls unconscious and the house full of crying children.

Biton said the family rushed to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, where tests showed benzodiazepines in the girls’ urine. She said doctors told her the girls were stable, but stressed that the substance was a powerful sedative and that the amount found was extreme. Biton said she immediately asked police to examine the jar, telling them it was “poisoned” and that something in it had caused the collapse.

The child who fed the toddlers was Biton’s 11-year-old daughter, whom she said was deeply traumatized and suffered a panic attack and vomiting. Biton said the girl kept asking why she had given the food to her sisters. She added that the jar appeared to have been sealed tightly and that her daughter did not hear any sound when opening it, which only later made the family suspect tampering.

Biton also said police focused on the parents after the incident, calling her and her husband in for questioning as suspects in child abuse two days later. She said she asked investigators to look into a possible nationalist motive, but they did not address that request. Biton added that after another poisoning case last Thursday, involving a family she knows with the same symptoms and a similarly sealed jar, police finally understood that the jar itself may be the key to the case.