Salisbury restaurant patrons have ‘medical incident’

LONDON — British police closed roads and called a hazmat response team Sunday night after two people became ill at a restaurant in the English city where a Russian ex-spy and his daughter were poisoned with a chemical nerve agent.

Wiltshire Police described the emergency steps taken in response to “a medical incident” in Salisbury as precautions. The city spent months with quarantine tents and investigators in full-body protective gear combing for evidence after Sergei Skripal and his adult daughter were found unconscious on a bench in March.

Its residents were put back on edge in June when a man and a woman living in a nearby town were hospitalized with signs of exposure to the same Soviet-made nerve agent, Novichok. The woman, 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess, died.

Britain’s counterterrorism police said this month that they think Sturgess’ boyfriend found a counterfeit perfume bottle containing remnants of the substance originally applied on the front door of Skripal’s home in Salisbury.

“As a precautionary measure, the restaurant and surrounding roads have been cordoned off while officers attend the scene and establish the circumstances surrounding what has led them to fall ill,” Wiltshire police said in a statement.

British prosecutors have charged two Russian men in absentia with poisoning Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. They allege that Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov were Russian intelligence agents, which they and Moscow deny.