Meting justice amid tragedy

In the law, the concepts of mercy and accountability are not mutually exclusive. Utahns need to remember that as charges of negligent homicide against a pesticide company employee in the deaths of two little Layton girls move forward.

This past week, Cole Nocks, an employee of Bugman Pest and Lawn Inc., who allegedly buried too much of the pesticide Fumitoxin too close to a Layton home, killing two sisters and sickening their family, was charged with two counts of negligent homicide. The charges are class A misdemeanors, punishable by one year in jail. Nocks and his employer also could face heavy fines.

In some respects, man's law cannot touch the emotional pain Nocks must have experienced following the deaths of the 4-year-old Rebecca Toone and her 15-month-old sister, Rachel. While it is hoped that prosecutors can take into account Nocks' remorse for these events, justice demands that he — and his employer — must be held to account for the botched pesticide application that killed the young sisters and sickened other family members. The girls' autopsies showed high levels of phosphorus as well as lung damage consistent with inhaling a harmful substance.

Utah Department of Agriculture officials said Nocks did not make the Toones aware of the pesticide's danger and buried the material too close to the house on Feb. 5, in violation of EPA regulations that then restricted the application to 15 feet from a building's structure. The FDA has since prohibited the application of aluminum and magnesium phosphide fumigants near homes.

The Utah Department of Agriculture, which regulates pesticide application, found more than 3,000 records violations with Bugman Pest and Lawn Inc. in just the past year.

Five different Bugman employees reportedly applied Fumitoxin (the pesticide that killed the Toone girls) 53 times without a fumigant management plan. In some of those cases, Fumitoxin was applied within the 15-foot exclusion zone, as then established by the Environmental Protection Agency. The Agriculture Department is pursuing administrative matters within its jurisdiction.

The Toone family, which has kept a low profile throughout these events, has been the model of grace.

"While we continue to mourn the passing of Rebecca and Rachel, we feel compassion for all involved in this situation. Although we understand and support the demands of the law, we hope those demands will be tempered with mercy," parents Nathan and Brenda Toone said in a statement.

They're right. The responsible parties in this case must be held to account. But that does not mean justice must be devoid of mercy.