FORT LUPTON, Colo. — A woman who said she contracted salmonella from a Weld County Mexican restaurant is suing it.

Dawn Malek and the law firm Marler Clark filed the lawsuit against Burrito Delight on March 12, seeking unspecified damages.

Malek said she’d eaten at the Fort Lupton Mexican restaurant many times in the past and enjoyed the food.

She said she ate there again on Feb. 18 and had the Fort Lupton burrito.

Three days later, she said she was violently ill with severe diarrhea.

“It was just terrifyingly painful,” Malek said. “I was crying myself to sleep in pain.

“There was no control of anything. No control at all. So no matter where I was … that’s why I slept in the bathroom most of the time. Even if I was laying on the floor, I couldn’t get to the bathroom in time.”

Malek said she started to feel better a week after the symptoms started and after getting prescription antibiotics from a doctor.

She and one of her attorneys, Drew Falkenstein, filed the lawsuit to recoup her medical costs, pain and suffering and any health issues that might continue.

“If you look at Burrito Delight’s history of inspections over the past couple of years, this is an example of a restaurant that may not have been doing it right,” Falkenstein said.

Weld County reports Burrito Delight in Fort Lupton had 17 critical violations in about the past year. Most of them were later corrected.

After the outbreak in February, Burrito Delight voluntarily closed the Fort Lupton location and the Dacono restaurant, which was not connected to the outbreak.

After a training session with the health department, the Dacono Burrito Delight reopened in the last week.

A manager called the owner, but the owner never returned a call seeking comment.