TAMPA, Fla. — Last Halloween, David Nolan-Hersey woke up sick.

The 34-year-old lived at All About Living Inc., a small group home in Tampa. Near the end of October, another resident bit him on the arm.

Nolan-Hersey contracted necrotizing fasciitis, a rare infection more commonly known as “flesh-eating bacteria.” Doctors had to amputate two of his fingers.

Now, his mother is suing the group home for over $100,000 in damages, alleging that staff did not provide proper care to her son in the early stages of his infection.

Kelly Gray enrolled her son at All About Living Inc. last July. According to court filings, David Nolan-Hersey has autism and an intellectual disability that requires supervision and assistance with daily activities.

On the day that Nolan-Hersey was bitten, he did not receive care for the wound, according to the lawsuit. When he woke up sick the next morning, staff took him to his daytime program even though he had vomited and refused to eat, the filing states.

Shortly after he arrived at the daytime program, Nolan-Hersey began to throw up again. Staff contacted All About Living and arranged for him to be taken back to the home, where he continued to vomit and refuse food, according to the lawsuit.

Jessica Espinosa, who runs the home with her husband, Eduardo Espinosa, took a video to send to Nolan-Hersey’s mother. In the video, Espinosa can be heard asking Nolan-Hersey: “Your hand hurt? Why you didn’t eat? You not hungry?” while he points to his right arm and says “Owie,” the lawsuit states.

All About Living did not obtain further medical care for Nolan-Hersey after the video was taken, according to the court filing. By the next day, when his body temperature reached 101.2 degrees and his right hand and arm had swollen, the home called 911.

Nolan-Hersey was taken to Tampa General Hospital’s emergency department, where doctors found elevated white blood cell counts “consistent with a serious systemic infection,” according to the lawsuit. Following a physical exam, doctors diagnosed Nolan-Hersey with necrotizing fasciitis, or “flesh-eating bacteria.”

His condition at the time was considered both limb- and life-threatening, according to the court filing.

For the next month, Nolan-Hersey underwent multiple operations and medical procedures to remove the bacteria and clean the wound. Though doctors treated him with “aggressive antibiotic therapy and repeated surgeries,” the tissue destruction was so severe that two of Nolan-Hersey’s fingers had to be amputated.

He was also left with “significant soft tissue injury” in his upper arm, according to the lawsuit.

Dr. Fritz Brink, a general surgeon in South Florida, said cases of necrotizing fasciitis are “not a rare thing.” Though he did not treat Nolan-Hersey, he deals with similar infections roughly once a month.

“This is a rapidly progressing infection,” Brink said. “And since the treatment is surgical, the further the infection travels, the more surgery needs to be done in order to control the infection.”

Doctors treat necrotizing fasciitis by cutting away infected tissue, washing away the bacteria and providing additional care with antibiotics. Amputations typically only occur when the infection travels to the hands or feet, which have less skin around the bones and tendons to cut away.

“The only way to control it is to remove all the tissue, and then you end up having to do an amputation, because there’s nothing left to save,” Brink said.

In 2023, Brink treated a different patient who developed necrotizing fasciitis from a bite wound, eventually saving the patient’s leg by cutting nearly 70% of the tissue away from his thigh.

Although bite wounds are an uncommon way of contracting the infection, Brink said, any break in the skin poses risk.

“It’s not necessarily bacteria from the mouth itself,” he said. “It’s more the bacteria that’s living on the skin, and the break in the skin gives the bacteria an opportunity to get into the space.”

The earliest sign of necrotizing fasciitis, he said, is “pain out of proportion to the initial injury.” But since the infection requires surgical intervention, and often hides by traveling deep underneath the skin, very little can be done to treat it outside a hospital.

“You would need somebody who’s qualified to identify it ... and then know what to do with that finding,” Brink said. “I would say that there’s nothing that could be done as an outpatient. At that point, the patient needs to come in and have a surgery.”

Nolan-Hersey’s lawyers declined to comment for this story, citing the ongoing lawsuit. His mother could not be reached for comment.

Jessica Espinosa directed comment to her lawyer, who could not be reached.

The case and any potential trial could be tied up in court through 2027.

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