Woman suspected of sending ricin to White House is arrested at Canada border
A woman suspected of sending an envelope containing the poison ricin to the White House, has been arrested at the New York-Canada border and is also suspected of sending fivesimilar poisoned envelopes to law enforcement agencies in Texas.
The letter was intercepted earlier this week before it reached the White House.
The woman was taken into custody by US Customs and Border Protection officers late on Sunday at the Peace Bridge border crossing near Buffalo and is expected to face federal charges.
The woman has not been named, but is reported to have joint Canadian and French citizenship. She is scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday.
On Monday, Canadian police led by chemical weapons specialists searched an apartment linked to the woman in the Montreal suburb of St-Hubert.
“We believe a total of six letters were sent, one to the White House and five to Texas,” RCMP officer Charles Poirier said outside the modern brownand-grey building where the search was taking place. “We can’t confirm that she lived in [the apartment], but it is connected to her.”
The letter addressed to the White House was intercepted at a government facility that screens mail addressed to the White House and Donald Trump and a preliminary investigation indicated it tested positive for ricin, according to the officials.
The FBI is investigating several suspected ricin letters sent to law enforcement and detention facilities in south Texas, a US law enforcement source told Reuters.
So far they have not found any link to political or terrorist groups, but the investigation is ongoing, the source said.
The police department in Mission, Texas, received a suspicious letter within the last week, said a spokesman, Art Flores. The department did not open the envelope and turned it over to the FBI, he said.
Flores also said the Mission police had arrested the woman in early 2019, but said he did not have records related to the arrest and referred further inquiries to the FBI.
Ricin is found naturally in castor beans but it takes a deliberate act to convert it into a biological weapon. Ricin can cause death within 36 to 72 hours from exposure to an amount as small as a pinhead. No known antidote
exists.
There have been several prior instances in which US officials have been targeted with ricin sent through the mail.
A navy veteran was arrested in 2018 and confessed to sending envelopes to Trump and members of his administration that contained the substance from which ricin is derived. The letters were intercepted, and no one was hurt.
In 2014, a Mississippi man was sentenced to 25 years in prison after sending letters dusted with ricin to Barack Obama and other officials.