A New Jersey airline pilot who died after contracting a rare disease caused by a tick bite that made him allergic to red meat has been identified as father of three Brian Paul Waitzel, who was found unconscious by his teen son after eating a burger.

The 47-year-old JetBlue pilot had unknowingly contracted alpha-gal syndrome last year, and first became gravely ill after eating a steak on a family camping trip, leaving him “writhing in pain, having diarrhea and vomiting,” his wife, Pieper, told The New York Times.

When he felt perfectly fine the next morning, he chalked it up to a bad case of food poisoning even though no one else in the family had gotten sick.

But then two weeks later, still unaware of his condition, Waitzel ate a burger at a barbecue. Just four hours later, his son found him on the bathroom floor in a pool of vomit. He died later that night.

Blood tests would later confirm his grim status as the first documented fatality of the obscure disease, brought on by a lone star tick bite, which causes severe allergic reactions to beef, pork and lamb.

Instances of alpha-gal have spiked in recent decades as the population of lone star ticks has flourished in the Tri-State Area, with 400 diagnoses in New Jersey in 2024 and some 3,700 suspected cases on Eastern Long Island between 2017 and 2022.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in 2023 that since 2010 as many as 450,000 people nationwide might have developed the meat allergy as a result of alpha-gal syndrome, mostly without their knowledge.

A 2017 study by the National Institutes of Health indicated eating red meat may have resulted in additional deaths from the disease, but it may have been overlooked as the potential cause of death due to how rarely it’s diagnosed.

The disease is communicated via a sugar molecule found in the saliva of certain tick species. Once contracted, some sufferers experience a hyper immune response that results in a major allergic reaction once they encounter it again.

Some of those afflicted also develop a severe allergy to milk, and others can eventually go back to their carnivorous ways without getting sick, as long as they don’t get bitten again, Long Island allergist and immunologist Erin McGintee told the outlet.

Waitzel’s obituary describes him as an avid hiker and Yankees fan, who loved his family and traveling. He shared three children, ages 12-16, with Pieper, his wife of 19 years.

The widow shared with The New York Times that she and her late husband had discussed the disease years ago after she happened across an article about it, recalling that what she read sounded like something out of science fiction.

“I said to my husband, ‘You should read this,’” she told the outlet.

But after reading the article, she put alpha-gal largely out of mind, owing to it being “just a little too obscure” to be fearful of.

Waitzel’s autopsy results determined he had died due to “sudden unexplained death,” a vague answer that haunted his family.

“Everything changed in our life in 10 minutes and to not know why,” Pieper said. “That was so upsetting.”

Discovering the truth more than a year later, she said “brings a lot of closure.”