WILTSHIRE, ENGLAND — British investigators have descended upon a small English town to find out how two seemingly random individuals were exposed to the same Soviet-era nerve agent that nearly killed a former Russian double agent and his daughter earlier this year.
Authorities confirmed Wednesday night that a couple, identified in British media as Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, were being treated for exposure to Novichok, a highly toxic nerve agent first developed in secret by the Soviet Union.
The pair remain in critical condition after being rushed on Saturday to Salisbury District Hospital, the same hospital that treated former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia who were poisoned in March.
Police say they don’t believe that Rowley and Sturgess were deliberately targeted, unlike the Skripals who British authorities suspects were the victims of a Russian plot.
British Home Secretary Sajid Javid will chair an emergency meeting Thursday to discuss the incident. Prime Minister Theresa May has been updated on the situation, her office told CNN.
What happened?
Rowley and Sturgess live in Amesbury, a town of fewer than 10,000 people about 20 minutes drive from Salisbury where the Skripals were poisoned.
Authorities did not name the two but described them as British nationals working in the area.
Paramedics were called to an address on Muggleton Road, Amesbury, at 10:15 a.m. Saturday, after a woman, later identified as Sturgess, collapsed, according to Neil Basu, the assistant commissioner for counter terrorism at the London Metropolitan Police.
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They were called back later the same day when the man, now known to be Rowley, had also fallen ill.
The couple made a round trip to Salisbury from nearby Amesbury on Friday, according to family and friends who spoke to British media. Authorities said while they were in Salisbury they didn’t visit any of the sites that were decontaminated in connection to the Skripal case.
Doctors initially thought they’d been exposed to a batch of contaminated cocaine or heroin. However, concerns over their symptoms prompted medical officials to look at Novichok as a serious possibility.
Basu said authorities received test results Wednesday evening that confirmed the couple had been exposed to Novichok.
What’s the connection to the Skripal case?
Beyond the fact that all four individuals were exposed to the same nerve agent, it’s not clear if there’s any connection between the cases.
Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found slumped over on a bench in Salisbury in March. Authorities believed they were exposed to Novichok in Sergei Skripal’s home. Both were admitted in critical condition and spent weeks in the hospital before they were discharged.
The March incident in Salisbury sparked a diplomatic dispute between the UK and Russia after British investigators and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) blamed Moscow for the attack.
Russia has denied the allegations, but that did not stop more than 20 other countries from expelling Russian diplomats in a show of support for the UK.
Rowley and Sturgess, however, do not appear to have a relationship with Moscow.
Authorities said there’s no evidence that the two were specifically targeted. They’ve been described as normal, local residents with no ties to Russia.
Basu said police were not in a position to say whether Rowley and Sturgess were exposed to the same batch of Novichok as the Skripals were.
He did say that authorities are looking into whether the two investigations are linked.
What are authorities doing?
The priority, according to Basu, is to establish how Rowley and Sturgess came into contact with Novichok.
Police have cordoned off a number of sites the two visited before they fell ill as a precautionary measure.
Wiltshire Police Deputy Chief Constable Paul Mills listed five locations that couple was believed to have visited and were blocked to the public: Amesbury Baptist Church; a Boots pharmacy in Amesbury; Queen Elizabeth Gardens in Salisbury; the John Baker House in Salisbury, a supported living facility; and the property on Muggleton Road.
Authorities did not say when the victims visited each location, but church secretary Ray Collins told CNN he believed the couple attended a family fun day at the church on Saturday, though he did not know who the pair were.
The fun day began at 2 p.m., according to the church’s Facebook event, so it’s possible that only Rowley went.
What is novichok?
Nerve agents kill by affecting the nervous system in various ways.
Novichok, which works by causing a slowing of the heart and restriction of the airways, is one of the world’s rarest nerve agents. Very few people outside of Russia have experience with it.
It was first developed in secret by the Soviet Union during the Cold War in the 1980s, as a means of countering US chemical weapons defenses but was revealed to the world by former Soviet scientist and whistle-blower Vil Mirzayanov.
Mirzayanov told CNN Novichok is up to 10 times as potent as VX, the weapon used to kill Kim Jong Un’s half brother, Kim Jong Nam, in 2017.
“A lethal dose … and the person will die immediately. If [the dosage] is less, [the person] will go through very tortuous scenes. They will start convulsions, and stop breathing and then lose vision, and there are other problems — vomiting, everything. It’s a terrible scene,” Mirzayanov told CNN.
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