The formerly top secret chemical weapon that sent Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia to the hospital in Salisbury, England has claimed another two victims in the same town. This week a couple living in homeless shelters were poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent that Britain accuses the Russian government of deploying against an intelligence officer who betrayed them.
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Accident: Britain’s Metropolitan Police say they’re currently operating under the assumption that Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, the two victims, were not “deliberately targeted” by anyone. Police further said they “now know that they were exposed to the nerve agent after handling a contaminated item.” By all outward appearances, Rowley and Sturgess have nothing in their background that would suggest a connection to intelligence or Russia, marking them as odd victims of a poison last used to attack a former Russian double agent. The Sun reports that Sturgess, an alcoholic, was living in a homeless shelter at the time of the incident and dating Rowley, a former heroin addict.
The newcomers: Novichoks—Russian for “newcomers”—are a class of nerve agents developed in secret by the Soviet Union in the waning years of the Cold War and designed to be more powerful than traditional nerve agents like VX. Many nerve agents are non-persistent, meaning they gas off shortly after exposure to the air. If Novichoks are non-persistent like the VX from which they were derived, that means Rowley and Sturgess would’ve had to come into much closer contact with a contaminated item.
Litter: Fellow residents at Sturgess’s homeless shelter told The Daily Mail they believe she may have smoked a discarded cigarette butt contaminated with Novichok. Locations mentioned by British public health authorities offer few clues as to how the two may have come in contact with the substance. Public Health England is warning residents to wash and clean their clothes if they were near the shelter where the two were staying, a pharmacy where Sturgess picked up a prescription, a church where she and her boyfriend ate, a house where the two visited and the Queen Elizabeth Gardens park where they picnicked.
Where’s the overlap? If you map the travels of the Skripals on the day they were poisoned with the known travels of Rowley and Sturgess, you’ll find some proximity but not much direct overlap. On the day Yulia and Sergie were poisoned, they drove down Sergei’s house to a parking garage in Salisbury, had a drink at Bishops Mill Pub, ate at Zizzi restaurant in the downtown area and were found on a park bench. Rowley and Sturgess lived about 370 yards from the park bench where the Skripals were found, which is also 290 yards from the park where Rowley and Sturgess picnic. Investigators also say Skripals were poisoned by touching a door handle smeared with Novichok at Sergei’s house—fairly far away from any of the locations visited by Rowley and Sturgess.
Misdiagnosis: Police originally thought the two had consumed a bad batch of heroin or crack. That’s consistent with the impressions of witnesses and first responders when the Skripals were first found unresponsive. Hospital officials first admitted the Skripals on suspicion that they had overdosed on fentanyl, a powerful opioid. Moreover, the city of Salisbury has also had problems contaminated batches of heroin affecting users in the area in recent years.
Symptoms: Sam Hobson, a friend of the two, told reporters that Rowley became violently ill, had pinpoint pupils and seemed to be hallucinating in the shower—all symptoms consistent with nerve agent poisoning. Andrey Zheleznyakov, a Soviet scientist who became the first person known to be exposed to a Novichok agent during an accidental poisoning in the 1980s, suffered from hallucinations “in which the onion-domed church across the way suddenly glowed brightly and broke up into a thousand swirling pieces,” according to Jonathan Tucker’s War of Nerves.
Delayed onset: Part of what’s puzzling investigators is the fact that Rowley and Sturgess became symptomatic at different times. First responders found both of the Skripals sickened on a park bench at the same time, but Rowley and Sturgess fell ill hours apart. Rowley became symptomatic in the shower a full four hours after seeing his girlfriend taken away in an ambulance.
Unleash the trolls: Russian’s famously trolly, conspiracy-loving diplomatic Twitter accounts are very much on-brand in the wake of the poisoning and have used the incident to claim that the Novichok came from a British chemical weapons lab.
Timing: The incident comes at a time of great tension ahead of a NATO Heads of State and Government summit next Thursday. The meeting has been thrown into turmoil by President Trump’s aggressive stance towards traditional American allies within the organization, whilst he continues to back Russia in public—calling for it to be readmitted to the G8. So far, he has made no comment on the news that two British citizens have apparently been struck down by a Russian nerve agent. Days after the NATO meeting, Trump will travel to a summit with Vladimir Putin in Finland, where he will reportedly hold meetings with his Russian counterpart so secretive that note takers or aides will not be allowed in the room with the two men.
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