Girl 'accidentally' poisons two roommates

Two students from an art college in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region were poisoned with a toxic chemical by their roommate, who has claimed it was an accident. Local procurators have issued an arrest warrant.

The Procuratorate of Qingxiu District in Nanning claimed Friday that it had issued a warrant to arrest the student, surnamed Cao, 19, for the crime of using dangerous materials, news portal eastday.com reported.

One of the poisoned girls, a freshman at the college, drank a cup of water from a water dispenser in the dorm at 9 am on January 14 after getting up, the report said.

She then went to her teacher's office. But 10 minutes later, she fainted and fell to the ground, and her teacher called medical workers in the college who gave her some pills for hypoglycemia on condition that she did not eat breakfast.

However, she still felt dizzy and had to stop and rest in the hall.

At that time, Cao passed by and she told her that she had been poisoned with industrial salts, and that she should take some vitamin C. Cao admitted that she put the industrial salts into the water, eastday.com reported.

The other roommate made oatmeal using the water in the dispenser, but noticed that the odor was strange and stopped eating. Her health condition is better than her roommate's as she ate very little.

Cao explained to police that "I did not deliberately put the poison into the dispenser, and I just wanted to commit suicide with the chemicals, but I accidentally spilled them into the machine."

According to Cao, she got the idea to commit suicide on the night of January 13 after her roommates laughed at her for taking a bath on the balcony in the dorm, as she did not want to wash in the dorm washroom because she felt it was dirty.

Cao then took some industrial salts she owned and tried to add water to them, but in the process they were dropped in the water dispenser.

She said she was worried her roommates would laugh at her suicide idea, so she did not tell them about the danger.

Prosecutors said that even though Cao may have accidentally spilled the chemicals into the water, she still knew they were dangerous and didn't stop others from drinking it.