The girlfriend of an Australian man who was sickened by rat poison has been ordered not to leave the country, Taipei prosecutors said yesterday, after reports that she told prosecutors she had prepared the poison for herself.
Australian Alex Shorey, 24, left Taiwan on Wednesday on a medical evacuation flight bound for Queensland, where he is continuing to receive treatment after ingesting the rat poison superwarfarin.
Authorities searched the residence of Shorey’s Taiwanese girlfriend on Wednesday as the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office opened an investigation into the case.
Photo: CNA
Also conducting investigations are the Taipei Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division and Xinyi Precinct, which interviewed people of interest in the case and reviewed Shorey’s medical records.
The girlfriend was on Thursday questioned and ordered not to leave the country, although she has not been arrested or charged, the office said yesterday.
The office declined to release the content of her statement, citing an active investigation.
However, Chinese-language media reported that she said she prepared the poison with the intent of taking her own life after quarreling with Shorey, who then accidentally ingested it instead.
Prosecutors said they are considering taking a statement remotely from Shorey after he recovers.
Both of Shorey’s parents were interviewed by authorities prior to their departure from Taiwan, they added.
The office also ruled out the possibility of food poisoning or illegal drugs as the cause of the poisoning.
The cause would be determined after further investigation, it added.
A probe into whether Shorey ingested the poison through contaminated drugs was launched in response to media reports on the topic and is being led by the office’s chief drug prosecutor, the office said in a statement on Thursday.
The investigation comes after the Chinese-language United Daily News published a letter on Monday by doctor Tao Hung-yang (陶宏洋) who said that Shorey’s condition might have been caused by contaminated synthetic marijuana products.
Shorey, a native of Toowoomba in southern Queensland, was a student in a Chinese-language program at New Taipei City’s Tamkang University from September last year to February.
In the middle of last month he was admitted to Taipei Medical University Hospital with symptoms including nausea, vomiting, nosebleeds, bloody urine and coagulation disorders.
Doctors determined that he had likely been poisoned by superwarfarin, an anticoagulant rodenticide, and after he experienced an allergic reaction to his initial treatment, doctors adjusted his medication and his condition began to stabilize.
This story has been amended since it was first published.
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