🇨🇳 Aili Wang, a University of Wyoming microbiology graduate student from China, has been arrested on accusations she poisoned the tea of a colleague who had pending patents and with whom she didn’t get along, and then tried to flee the country after police questioned her.

Wang was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on Oct 6 while attempting to return to China. With her were laptops, electronic storage devices and documents now in the possession of police, who allege Wang was seen on surveillance video rummaging through the desk of the victim who specialized in technology for disease treatment — research similar to work she’d done in China.

Wang remains jailed without bail in Los Angeles.

She bought acrylamide over eBay, and it was first detected when the victim’s wife and others tested water from the coffee maker he used to brew tea.

The police investigation began after the victim “K.T.” — Kiet Tran, the man standing next to Wang in lower right pic — began experiencing symptoms and his wife and others isolated the chemical in the coffee maker water. The victim and campus police then set up surveillance cameras in the office space he shared with Wang at the university in Laramie.

Wang was recorded on Sep 27 going through the victim’s desk. On Oct 1, she was recorded “taking photos and manipulating notebooks” on his desk, as well as rinsing out his mug with a liquid from her own mug.

During an interview by campus police on Oct 5, Wang said she “had not used acrylamide in years.” A day later she was taken into custody in Los Angeles while in possession of “multiple laptops, multiple portable external digital storage devices, related accessories, physical records and written materials,” according to a request by Wyoming prosecutors to “significantly increase” her $200,000 bond upon extradition.

Wang had no reason to go through the desk of the other student whose federally funded, patent-pending research involved new technology for cancer, neurological and genetic disease treatment.
Wang “was reportedly working on similar research in China before coming to the US.”

The victim as a highly successful student from Vietnam.

Wang failed her first attempt to defend her dissertation and became envious of her colleague’s success in discovering how to deliver RNA to human cells using bacteria.

The victim began experiencing extreme tiredness, inability to sleep and other unexplained symptoms such as finger tingling and numbness, and leg weakness soon after attending a prestigious conference in Aug.

He also noticed a strange taste in the tea that he made with a small coffee maker on his desk. When he washed the coffee maker, the taste would go away.

Suspecting someone in their shared office could be poisoning the graduate student, a chemistry professor tested the water and identified acrylamide — which is “not something you would find in that kind of quantity anywhere.” 63 milligrams of white powder that tested positive for acrylamide were isolated.

Wang faces a felony aggravated assault and battery charge in Wyoming punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

It’s not clear when she could be extradited to the state, where Albany County Circuit Court Judge Robert Sanford granted prosecutors’ request and raised bond to $1.5 million cash-only.

Wang had asked eBay to delete her account after she bought acrylamide there twice last summer.

Best known as a carcinogenic byproduct of cooking starchy food and burning tobacco, acrylamide can be acutely toxic in high doses. It’s used in microbiology research involving proteins or DNA.

The victim was working on a pretty promising cancer therapy method. Wang took photos of every page of a notebook the victim left on his desk.

The victim continues to experience symptoms from the poisoning. Acrylamide is a neurotoxin that cannot be neutralized so it stays in neurons and basically kills them. So it’s unclear if he’ll fully recover or not.

https://t.co/OZQxfyqaHu

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