Warning over poison bought online that killed eight
A coroner has issued a warning over websites that give suicide advice after eight people were killed by a poison they bought online.
Police have traced 85 people in the UK and Europe who had either died after taking the unnamed chemical which turned out to be poison or had purchased it with a view to ending their lives.
Details of the deaths emerged in eight separate prevention of future death reports issued on Wednesday by Timothy Brennand, the senior coroner for Manchester West.
In his reports into the 'cluster' of eight deaths in his region, he did not identify the poison except to say it was a food preservative but also 'reportable poison as well as a reportable explosives precursor'.
'The police investigation into one UK based source of supply revealed in 247 cases separate supplies of 500g or less of [REDACTED] to customers in the UK and Europe, police established that 85 of these individuals who were traceable had either died as the consequence of self-ingestion of the substance, or had purchased it with a view to having the means to use this method to end their life in circumstances,' he said.
'Vendors were unaware'
In each of these instances, he said: 'The vendors of [REDACTED] were not aware of this potential misuse of the substance.
'The small quantities being purchased had been incorrectly evaluated to be an increase in individuals pursuing recreational home-curing/food preservations as a hobby, being an artefact of 'lockdown' living following the pandemic.
'Vendors were unaware that their website/details were being distributed as part of internet information platforms designed to aid, abet, assist or promote suicide methods.
'From the specific example of 247 supplies in a 12-month period, police established that 45 purchasers were confirmed as deceased (these deaths were in relation to supplies to UK customers and purchasers from abroad) and only 15 purchases were confirmed to have taken place for legitimate purposes (meat curing etc).'
Mr Brennand also warned about the availability of websites that give advice on how to take your own life.
He wrote: 'The police investigation revealed the ability of members of the public to access a number of websites, primarily created in the US, Canada and Mexico that promoted information as to how to access: a) poisons that could bring about death; b) how, in what way and with what other necessary preparations (in particular antiemetic medications), the poisons should be administered; c) sourcing such poisons/chemicals/medications in the UK and abroad.'
Student Matthew O'Reilly, 18, was discovered collapsed and unresponsive within his locked room at his accommodation in Salford, Greater Manchester, in September 2020. He died from a 'deliberate act of recent self-ingestion', Mr Brennand said.
Samuel Dickenson, 33, died in March 2020 in Wigan having left a suicide note.
Shaun Bass, 23, died in February 2020, in Bolton 'having ingested a significant quantity of [REDACTED] that he had acquired earlier in the month from an internet-based company licensed to sell reportable poisons'. He had suffered from depression and anxiety.
Mathew Price, 37, died in June 2021 at his home in Bolton.
Andrew Brown, 45, was found dead in August 2023 in circumstances that puzzled investigators as his motive still remains 'unclear'.
William Armstrong, 24, purchased the poison on the internet 'from a source in Russia', having shown symptoms of a psychotic illness.
Kelly Walsh, 45, was found dead in February 2021 at home in Atherton, Wigan, having ordered the poison 'from an internet-based supplier in Lithuania'. Her actions were 'deliberate and intentional' and her mental health was declining.
Chantelle Williams, who had a 'complex medical history', first ingested a 'significant but non-fatal' dose of the substance in 2019 and checked into Salford Royal Hospital where she received care.
Twice she managed to order the poison while still on the Keats Ward at the hospital and ingest the poison, with the second incident killing her in May 2020.
Coroner Mr Brennand added: 'The published guidance... does not give specific guidance or suggested training to sellers, particularly [REDACTED] acquired by members of the public, particularly over 'online marketplaces' in circumstances of the purchase on a 'one-off' basis for the means of self-harming.
'While there is a legal duty on persons selling this substance to report 'suspicious' transactions within 24 hours to the Home Office, the purchase of small quantities is being presumed to be connected to the many legitimate uses of the substance (such as food preservation, fertiliser etc) rather than in fact, being evaluated as a member of the public seeking purchase of modest quantities used as their chosen means by which to end life.
'The current Home Office guidance and supporting video, leaflet and posters do not reference [REDACTED] as a specific example of concern and focuses on the phenomenon of 'malicious' misuse and not deliberate misuse in the sense of suicide/self-harm.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
23 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Live Economy shrinks in blow for Reeves
Britain's economy shrank at the start of the second quarter, official figures show, in a blow for the Chancellor after her spending review. UK gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 0.3pc during the month, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This was worse than analysts' fears that the economy would shrink by 0.1pc and follows a 0.7pc expansion during the first three months of the year. The data covers the month when Donald Trump launched his so-called 'liberation day' tariff onslaught which threatened to upend global trade. ONS director of economic statistics Liz McKeown said: 'After increasing for each of the four preceding months, April saw the largest monthly fall on record in goods exports to the United States with decreases seen across most types of goods, following the recent introduction of tariffs.' The figures come a day after economists warned that Britain faces tax rises in the autumn after Rachel Reeves unveiled her spending review. The Chancellor has made growing the economy one of her key missions as she battles to shore up the public finances. An expanding economy would mean that she is better able to pay off the nation's debt and would improve living standards. Ms Reeves said: 'Our number one mission is delivering growth to put more money in people's pockets through our Plan for Change, and while these numbers are clearly disappointing, I'm determined to deliver on that mission.'
Telegraph
23 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Why Christianity might face the same fate as Paganism
In the spring of 2023, the Royal Household issued invitations to the Coronation of Charles III and Camilla featuring an unexpected crowned head – that of the Green Man. Had the King, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, embraced paganism? The folklorist Francis Young dispelled the chatter, explaining in The Spectator that the Green Man was just 'a personification of the natural world' – and that, as a coherent figure, he had been invented in 1939 by Lady Raglan, one of Young's less scrupulous predecessors in the field. Young knows everything about everything you never quite knew you wanted to know. And in Silence of the Gods, his impressive new history of the end of European paganism, he does so while conveying a dizzying level of doubt as to whether anything of interest is knowable with any certainty at all. Who exactly, for instance, were those 'pagans' against whom Henry of Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV of England, mounted crusades in the Lithuania of the 1390s? How did the legend of the werewolf come to be especially entwined with the folk customs of what was to become present-day Latvia? Having drawn one's attention to such tantalising questions, Young, a scholar immune to the temptations of flowered but delusive byways, at times refuses to answer them neatly. Silence of the Gods treats lesser discussed regions of Europe – the Baltic world, the Volga-Ural, Lapland/Sapmi, Finland and, in a more clement aside, the Canaries – over their long, transitional and little-documented Early Modern years. We're taken from the Christian-conversion processes initiated in the late 14th century to residual and local rituals that, in a handful of cases, by way of the potent crucible of 19th-century nationalism, have trickled into living memory. Young makes an irrefutable case that Lithuania, in particular, ought to be a great deal more studied and considered, whether by scholars, general readers or even contemporary policymakers. For, of all the voices that surface within Young's lightly technical, fundamentally clear prose, I was most struck by that of the Polish lawyer Paweł Włodkowic, who in 1414 established the juridical principle, uniquely advanced in its day, that pagans should not be massacred simply for being pagans. 'It is an error,' wrote Włodkowic, 'completely intolerable, that Christians should gather there to do war against the infidels solely because they are infidels, or because it is said that their goal is the spreading of the Christian Faith, for under the colour of piety impieties are committed.' Upon this rock was founded the political and ecumenical miracle that was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as, Young persuasively adds, 'the modern world of human rights and international law'. Yet of this brilliant moral jurist's personal character or individual life, we hear nothing. The same goes for the whole extensive galère of Grand Dukes, Jesuit or Lutheran missionaries, 'pagan' rebels, antiquaries, witch hunters and Romantic nationalist litterateurs upon whose evidence Young draws. Such restraint is hardly incompatible with this book's paradoxical quest. Young traces 'the urge to personify' within religious traditions who have left scarce traces of those personalised details. The names and portfolios of Pagan deities here seem to be linguistic corruptions of Christian saints, or Classical parallels misapplied by the Christian scholars recording 'pagan' practices. Such austerity demands a high level of readerly commitment. But it delivers, by the end of this concisely expressed, conceptually meaty book, a substantial reward. The argument at which Young arrives is both consistent and plausible; that the 'pagan' religions of Europe, faced with Christianity's aggressive expansion, entered a third, 'creolised' state. New ideas grew out of, or alongside, Christianity, without being convincingly Christian – an active, 'creative response' to the new, confessional faith's incursion. In an epilogue that reads as startlingly topical, Young proceeds to the next logical query – in the face of dominant European secularism, are we now beholding a 'creolised' transformation of Christianity in turn? (You only need to look to a doctrinally vague 'surf church' in Porto, Portugal, for proof.) Young again displays his knack for identifying a haunting question, without committing to a definitive or simplistic answer. But he does leave one parting insurance policy – 'human religiosity is full of surprises' – which allows room for the recent and intriguing speculation that Gen Z might be warming towards Christianity after all.
Reuters
26 minutes ago
- Reuters
Trump's energy dominance agenda could be ravaged by Section 899
LONDON, June 12 - A proposed U.S. tax targeting foreign investors could hurt European energy giants that operate in America's booming oil and gas sector, undermining what President Donald Trump describes as his energy dominance agenda. Trump's sweeping tax and spending bill under review by the Senate includes an additional tax of up to 20% on foreign investors' income, such as dividends and royalties. The tax, known as Section 899, was devised as a pushback against countries that impose what the bill describes as "unfair foreign taxes" on U.S. companies, such as digital services taxes. Section 899 is believed to be targeting companies headquartered in the European Union and Britain, which both have tax systems considered discriminatory by the Trump administration. The provision is a significant threat to London-listed Shell (SHEL.L), opens new tab and BP (BP.L), opens new tab as well as France's TotalEnergies ( opens new tab and Spain's Repsol ( opens new tab, which all have sprawling operations in the United States. Trump, who often used the slogan "drill, baby, drill" in his election campaign, has portrayed himself as pro-fossil fuel, vowing on his first day in office to maximise oil and gas production. But if approved, Section 899 could have the opposite effect. BP last year invested more than $6 billion, about 40% of its capital expenditure, in the United States, where its interests include onshore and offshore oil and gas operations, two refineries, thousands of retail fuel stations and a power trading business. The country is also home to more than a third of BP's global workforce of about 90,000 and accounted for roughly 30% of its 2024 revenue of $189 billion and more than a quarter of its $21 billion net profit. Shell, the biggest European oil major, is also a huge investor in the United States, which accounted for 23% of its 2024 revenue of $284 billion. It invests about 30% of its capital expenditure in the country, where it has oil and gas production facilities, a petrochemicals plant, a vast retail network, liquefied natural gas (LNG) purchasing agreements and major trading operations. The United States became increasingly important to Big Oil companies in recent decades thanks to its stable fiscal and regulatory environment while other regions presented a variety of challenges. Take Russia, for example. Its vast oil and gas resources started attracting investments from many companies in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the country is now uninvestible owing to western sanctions that followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Similarly, western companies have limited opportunities to invest in the Middle East, where national oil companies dominate. Europe, meanwhile, has limited natural resources and strict environmental regulation. The multinational nature of oil and gas companies means they have plenty of experience dealing with tax uncertainty, but shifting tax policies tend to delay investments. Company boards require long-term confidence to proceed with large, multi-decade capital projects such as oil and gas fields or LNG plants. The industry's confidence in the United States was already shaken under Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden, who in 2020 revoked a construction permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. The Biden administration also paused approvals for new LNG projects in 2024 because of climate concerns. Trump lifted the pause when he entered the White House. According to Section 899, multinational companies could face a new tax on dividends sent overseas and inter-company loans, potentially reducing profit. The Gulf of Mexico accounted for about 10% of Shell's 2024 free cash flow of $40 billion, it said in a presentation. That means that Section 899 could shave $800 million from its free cash flow per year from Gulf of Mexico operations alone. BP made about $1.5 billion in free cash flow in the United States last year, Reuters calculations show. A 20% dividend tax could translate into a $300 million loss in free cash flow. Faced with the worsening fiscal terms, companies could opt to direct funds away from the United States. Though options for deploying capital elsewhere on a similar scale are limited, companies could choose to spread their investments more widely. Such a scenario could be a boon for countries such as Canada, Brazil, Mozambique and Namibia, which have large untapped natural resources. Another option would be for companies to transfer their headquarters and listings to the United States - a costly and politically complicated option. Shell previously contemplated such a move to boost its share value, though it appears to have abandoned the idea. Ultimately, it is very likely that the Senate would push to modify Section 899 or limit its scope, given the potential far-reaching impact on many sectors. But barring a radical change, Section 899 poses a huge risk for European oil and gas giants that are heavily dependent on the United States. Achieving the Trump administration's energy dominance agenda will almost certainly require more foreign investment, not less, so if the CEOs of European energy companies complain loudly enough, the president may well listen to them. The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters Enjoying this column? Check out Reuters Open Interest (ROI), opens new tab, your essential new source for global financial commentary. ROI delivers thought-provoking, data-driven analysis. Markets are moving faster than ever. ROI, opens new tab can help you keep up. Follow ROI on LinkedIn, opens new tab and X., opens new tab
