Austrian police have arrested a person suspected of lacing jars of child meals with rat poison in what authorities presumed was an extortion scheme.
Police, cited by the APA information company, stated the suspect, aged 39, was apprehended within the state of Burgenland, south of Vienna. They didn’t identify him nor say the place precisely he was arrested.
He was charged with intentionally inflicting a public hazard and tried grievous bodily hurt.
The arrest comes two weeks after Austrian authorities detected rat poison in child meals jars offered in some supermarkets. The jars have been made by the German-based firm HiPP, and German police grew to become concerned within the case.
5 tampered jars have been recovered earlier than they have been consumed within the following days in Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Police stated they believed the crime was carried out to extort the corporate, which put out a product recall in Austria.
One of many adulterated jars was purchased in a Spar grocery store in Burgenland state, within the metropolis of Eisenstadt. It was discovered to comprise 15 micrograms of rat poison.
One other jar offered in the identical grocery store was suspected to have additionally been laced with poison, however it has not but been recovered.
