Lucia Anderson, of Calumet City, bought the mysterious seeds, which come from a native Southeast Asia plant called cerbera odollam, from an e-commerce website, according to her mother, Natosha Anderson.
They often go undetected in toxicology reports, so statistical data on the number of suicides caused by the seeds is hard to determine.
"[Lucia] had just come out a few months ago as a woman, she was being bullied online after coming out on the [Internet], and it wasn't going the way she thought it would," Anderson, 40, tells PEOPLE. "My last words to her were, 'You're going to be fine,' and then I watched my kid die."
The killer pods, which are available for purchase on various wholesale sites, cause a prolonged and painful death by inducing complete heart block within hours of ingestion – deriving the apt nickname "suicide seeds," by Internet users.
"[Lucia] was laying on the bathroom floor and vomiting," Anderson says. "At first, I thought she was sick, but then she said that she had taken a pong bean, which I had never heard of."
"Something like this has the potential to spread like wildfire," Indiana Poison Center medical director Dr. Daniel E. Rusyniak tells PEOPLE. "I get worried, because you get something like this that has the potential to become an phenomenon."
CREDIT: People
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