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The family of a man who died after eating a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder has now spoken out after learning he was the first fatality linked to a multi-state E. coli outbreak.

James Charles Smith Jr., who goes by JC, was a frequent visitor to the Golden Arches near Grand Junction, Colorado, where he lived with his wife, Doris.

The older couple, who had just celebrated their platinum wedding anniversary, always ordered the same thing on the menu: a Quarter Pounder.

But after one such visit in late September, Smith became ill.

“My mother had been awake all night. “He was on the toilet all night, had bloody diarrhea and was so weak,” Smith’s daughter Debbie Bonnell told CBS News on Friday. “When I got here he was so weak he couldn’t walk.”

He was hospitalized with E. coli O157:H7 for four days.

At the time, the cause of the outbreak was not yet clear, so after Smith and Doris recovered, they went back to McDonald’s and each ordered another Quarter Pounder.

The Smiths ordered the same burger, but Doris made one small change: She removed her onions.

“I took mine off and gave him mine,” Doris told CBS. “I feel guilty now because I gave him onions.”

This time his symptoms returned far more aggressively.

“I held his hand and prayed and told him to try to rest: ‘We’re here with you’ and ‘We’re getting help for you,'” his daughter said.

On October 20, the 88-year-old former firefighter died as a result of an E. coli infection.

“He just wanted to enjoy a hamburger with his wife,” Smith’s daughter, Debbie Bonnell, told CBS News on Friday.

“He has put his trust in these restaurants and all we really want is for our father to come back. We watched as my father was in unbearable pain for many days – kicking his arms and legs. It was very difficult.”

According to the Food and Drug Administration’s latest update, Smith is one of 90 people in 13 states infected in an E. coli outbreak linked to onions on McDonald’s Quarter Pounder burgers. Colorado is one of the worst affected states, the agency said.

While the 88-year-old is the only death, at least 27 people were hospitalized and two developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a rare but serious complication from E. coli that can lead to kidney failure, according to the FDA.

It is not clear whether Smith developed HUS.

Health officials reported the outbreak to the public two days after Smith’s death.

FDA investigators now believe that yellow onion slices served in Quarter Pounders are the cause of the E. coli outbreak.

The onions, which came from the Taylor Farms distribution facility in Colorado Springs, have been recalled from the affected McDonald’s locations.

Smith wasn’t the only Colorado resident to fall ill after visiting the fast food chain in the state.

Kamberlyn Bowler, 15, also of Grand Junction, was flown 250 miles to a hospital near Denver in mid-October after eating McDonald’s Quarter Pounders three times in recent weeks.

Bowler ended up needing dialysis for ten days to save her kidneys.

The Bowler family now wants to sue McDonald’s.

The Smiths said they are focused only on grieving the loss of their father, grandfather, great-grandfather and husband.

Smith’s son Jim told CBS that his father was taken too soon.

“We still had a lot of plans,” he said, adding: “All in all, my father was a loving person. He was compassionate. If he had to be strict, you didn’t want to be on that side.”

According to the Snyder Memorial and Funeral Home, Smith was buried Tuesday afternoon at the Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Western Colorado.

The Independent has reached out to McDonald’s and Taylor Farms for comment on Smith’s death.