The college student who poisoned 3 classmates with thallium
nitrate revealed that he purchased the poison from a chemical plant
in Sichuan Province, Jiangsu police revealed
yesterday.
The student, surnamed Chang, a freshman at the China University
of Mining and Technology (CUMT) based in Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province, was arrested by local police
on June 12. He confessed to purchasing 250 grams of thallium
nitrate via the Internet from a plant in Sichuan on May 22. On May
29, he injected around 2 ml of thallium into each drinking cup of
three classmates. In the evening, the three students fell gravely
ill after drinking water from the poisoned cups. The rest of the
thallium was recovered from Chang's classroom after his arrest.
CUMT Vice President Wang Jianping had good news to give at a
press conference yesterday, saying, "All the students are in stable
condition and recovering well and will leave hospital in a few
weeks."
Wang Jianping, vice president of China
University of Mining and Technology (CUMT) based in Xuzhou City,
Jiangsu Province, on Wednesday afternoon briefed the press on the
poisoning case. (photo from the campus website)
One student, surnamed Niu, currently receiving treatment in
Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei Province, is now able to walk by himself
and ingest liquids. Chief Physician Lu Shijun said that Niu had
been suffering from hair loss and vomiting when first admitted, but
that they had subsided as he began recovery. Thallium poisoning is
very rare, thus a clear treatment path is unavailable.
According to Hao Fengtong, director of Beijing Chaoyang
Hospital's Occupational Disease Department, where the other two
students, Liu and Shi are hospitalized, the thallium level in their
bodies has dropped to around 100 times higher than normal from 1000
through receiving double hemo-perfusion. Beijing Youth
Daily reported that one of the two had lost around 2/3 of his
hair, with the other shedding 1/5 of it. "Two or three months of
recovery will be needed for a good result," said Hao, adding that
hair loss was a typical symptom of thallium poisoning.
"Xuzhou Police has dispatched a team to the chemical plant in
Sichuan to investigate the conditions of the thallium sale, but
their findings will take time," Zhang Maoping, director of
Publicity Department of CUMT told China.org.cn. He refuted previous
media reports that the poison may have been stolen from the
university labs due to the heavily-restricted uses of thallium.
He also denied that the canteen where the four students dined
was shut down for safety reasons. Operating under the initial
belief in a food poisoning scare, the canteen was closed for
check-ups but no other similar cases were found in other students.
Later, tests carried out at the Jiangsu Provincial Center for
Disease Control and Prevention came back negative. The university
is now conducting a thorough sweep of all canteens and snack shops
to eliminate all risk of food poisoning.
(China.org.cn by staff reporter Zhang Yunxing, June 21,
2007)
