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Work habits, training blamed for biologist’s death from plague

PHOENIX – A federal review says unsafe work practices and the failure of supervisors to follow policies and oversee workers led to a wildlife biologist’s plague death.

The biologist, 37-year-old Eric York, died at Grand Canyon National Park last year.

A National Park Service report released Tuesday says York didn’t wear gloves or a protective respirator while handling and performing a necropsy on a mountain lion that had died of the plague.

The report says York’s supervisors didn’t monitor his activities or review job hazards and that critical information wasn’t given to physicians who treated him at a clinic when he became ill.

York was found dead in his home six days after retrieving the dead animal on Oct. 26, 2007.

Citizen Online Archive, 2006-2009

This archive contains all the stories that appeared on the Tucson Citizen's website from mid-2006 to June 1, 2009.

In 2010, a power surge fried a server that contained all of videos linked to dozens of stories in this archive. Also, a server that contained all of the databases for dozens of stories was accidentally erased, so all of those links are broken as well. However, all of the text and photos that accompanied some stories have been preserved.

For all of the stories that were archived by the Tucson Citizen newspaper's library in a digital archive between 1993 and 2009, go to Morgue Part 2

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