Woman dies from nerve agent poison tied to Kremlin

A woman who was poisoned by a militarygrade nerve agent in southwest England died Sunday, eight days after police think she touched a contaminated item.

London’s Metropolitan Police force said the case had become a homicide investigation now that 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess died in a hospital in Salisbury. She and her boyfriend, Charlie Rowley, 45, were admitted June 30 and remained in critical condition.

Police said tests showed the two were exposed to Novichok, the same type of nerve agent used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury in March. Police suspect Rowley and Sturgess handled an item from the first attack, which Britain blames on Russia. Moscow denies involvement.

Prime Minister Theresa May said she is “appalled and shocked” by Sturgess’s death. “Police and security officials are working urgently to establish the facts of this incident, which is now being treated as murder,” May said.

More than 100 police officers have been working to locate a small vial or other container thought to have held the nerve agent, possibly discarded after the Skripal poisoning and that may have sickened Sturgess and Rowley. Officials say the search and cleanup operation will take weeks or even months.

Counterterrorism police are also studying roughly 1,300 hours of closed-circuit footage in hopes of finding clues about the couple’s activities in the hours before they became violently ill. Detectives want to know where the couple was to get new leads on where the contamination might have occurred.

Britain maintains the March attack on the Skripals had been ordered by the Russian government, a charge denied by representatives of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The case led to the expulsion of Russian diplomats from Britain, the U.S. and other countries, and tit-for-tat retaliation by Moscow.

The ex-agent was living in Salisbury, a cathedral city 90 miles southwest of London, when he was struck down along with his daughter, who was visiting him. They spent weeks in critical condition, but have both been discharged from the hospital.

The new poisoning has frightened some residents who thought an extensive cleanup had removed the threat of any further Novichok exposure.