Novichok disguised as perfume took 15 minutes to take hold
NOVICHOK victim Charlie Rowley has said the deadly nerve agent took just 15 minutes to fatally poison his partner after she sprayed the “oily” substance on her wrists believing it to be perfume.
Mr Rowley, 45, said he may have had the bottle in his home for two days before giving it to 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess, but could not recall where he had found it. He told ITV News the glass bottle and plastic dispenser were in a box encased in plastic, and that Ms Sturgess had recognised the brand.
The bottle had to be fitted to a plastic dispenser, he said, and he got some on his hands, which is how he thinks he came into contact with the substance.
He immediately washed it off, but his girlfriend rubbed her wrists together having sprayed the mist on to herself. Within a quarter of an hour she began complaining of a headache.
She died on July 8 after both fell ill a week earlier, having been exposed to the Novichok contained in the bottle.
He said: “I smelled it and it didn’t smell of perfume. It felt oily. I washed it off and I didn’t think anything of it.
“It all happened so quick. Within 15 minutes Dawn said she had a headache. She asked me if I had any headache tablets. In that time she said she felt peculiar and needed to lie down in the bath.
“I went into the bathroom and found her in the bath, fully clothed, in a very ill state.”
Mr Rowley, who said he would pluck items out of skips if he believed them to be of value, said he could not remember where he found the perfume box but that it looked expensive.
“I had a tendency for picking things up. You find things of value, yes, some treasures here or there. Unfortunately it turned out to be a bad find.”
Asked what he thought her illness was initially, he told ITV: “I thought at the time maybe it was a reaction to the medication she had taken.” This was the initial thought of paramedics too – that it had been drug related.
Ms Sturgess was taken to hospital and Mr Rowley returned to the flat in Amesbury, with the bottle, to pick up some belongings, but fell ill himself.
He cannot remember collapsing, but when he came round, officers began to ask him about the bottle.
“I was in complete shock when they told me it was Novichok,” he added. “It was all too much to take on board.”
He was then hit with the hammerblow that he had lost his partner. Describing Ms Sturgess as a “lovely lady”, he said they had planned to move in together in Amesbury.
The interview came as police announced the cordon at Ms Sturgess’s home at John Baker House, Salisbury, would be lifted after investigators found no contamination risk.
Police are believed to have identified the suspected perpetrators of the original Novichok attack on Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March.