Police: Search for deadly nerve agent could take months
POLICE continued their desperate search for the source of the deadly Novichok nerve agent yesterday – but admitted the hunt could take months.
Investigators wearing hazardous materials suits and gas masks were seen entering the hostel where victim Dawn Sturgess, 44, was living in Salisbury city centre.
Forensic tents have been put up outside the building, which has been sealed off with steel barriers. Fire crews also joined police at the home of Mrs Sturgess’s boyfriend Charles Rowley, 45, seven miles away in Amesbury.
One neighbour said they were being swabbed for signs of nerve agent poisoning and another said they had been told to have an ‘intensive shower’.
Police have also been handing out information leaflets to residents in Mr Rowley’s block of flats. Paramedics and firemen with breathing apparatus entered the building in the morning.
The Metropolitan Police yesterday said the process of finding the
source of the Novichok would be ‘slow and cautious,’ and could take ‘weeks or months’.
They have not ruled out the possibility that more people could fall ill, but insisted the risk is low.
Detectives do not know what the nerve agent was contained in but believe it was carelessly discarded after the attack on ex-Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March.
That may have been in Salisbury’s
where Mrs Queen Sturgess Elizabeth and Gardens, Mr Rowley spent the evening last Friday. One theory is that they took the item home, either to her hostel in the city, or to Mr Rowley’s flat in Amesbury. Both are in a critical condition in hospital. On Thursday night, Wiltshire Police chief constable Kier Pritchard told residents he was ‘deeply concerned’ and fears there could be another incident. Mrs Sturgess,
a to late mother- her last hostel, Friday of-three, John after had Baker shopping returned House, and relaxing in Queen Elizabeth Gardens, which remained cordoned off yesterday. Salisbury residents yesterday told of their fear at living under the threat of another contamination incident from the park. Mother-of-two Lucy Bayliss, 34, said: ‘I took my children here on Saturday morning and they were
playing in the river, running inside the big bushes as all the kids do here. The park was packed. To see the whole area sealed off with police tape today is terrifying. If they were poisoned here, then there are potentially hundreds of children who could have been exposed over the weekend.’ Public Health England said: ‘We are following up with anyone who may have been in direct contact with the affected individuals.’