A GIN and tonic taken from the home of Safeway poison case accused
Paul Agutter shortly after his wife became ill contained a high level of
the deadly drug atropine, a court heard yesterday.
Someone who drank half a glassful of the contaminated drink would have
ingested 288 times the normal therapeutic dose of atropine, Dr Howard
Okely told the High Court in Edinburgh.
Dr Okely, 48, said that he had also examined a bottle of Safeway diet
tonic found at the Agutters' home at Kilduff Lodge, Athelstaneford, East
Lothian. It contained atropine at a concentration of 103 milligrammes
per litre.
Dr Okely was giving evidence on the third day of the trial of Dr Paul
Agutter who denies attempting to murder his wife Alexandria, 39, at
their home on August last year by putting atropine in a glass of gin and
tonic.
Agutter also denies endangering the lives of eight people who drank
tonic water contaminated with atropine allegedly placed by him on the
shelves of the Safeway Supermarket at Swanston in Edinburgh on August
24.
Dr Okely said that he had examined a number of the bottles of tonic
water.
He said the bottles all contained atropine ranging in concentrations
from 74 milligrammes per litre down to 11 milligrammes.
However the concentration in the bottle found in the Agutter
household, Dr Okely accepted, was significantly lower than the level
found in the gin and tonic taken from the house.
0 He agreed with Advocate-depute Andrew Lamb that the concentration of
atropine found in the gin and tonic sample taken from Kilduff Lodge was
''far in excess'' of any other found during his tests.
Shown a glass taken from the Agutter household, Dr Okely said that if
it had been half full of the gin and tonic, anyone who drank the full
amount would have ingested about 49 milligrammes of atropine.
Cross-examined by defence counsel Mr Neil Murray, QC, Dr Okely said
that assuming the drink was half gin and half tonic it would have been
necessary to add atropine to the drink to get to the concentration of
292 milligrammes per litre.
On Tuesday, the court heard evidence from Dr Agutter's wife,
Alexandria, that she felt ''pretty weird'' after drinking about two
inches from a glass of gin and tonic prepared by her husband on August
28 last year.
Ambulance driver James Rudyj gave evidence that he was called to the
Agutter home just after 7pm on August 28 to deal with a case of
suspected poisoning.
He said that Dr Agutter had informed him that he had bought a bottle
of tonic water from Safeway at Swanston the previous Wednesday and had
noticed that the seal of the bottle had been broken.
Mr Rudyj took the almost full bottle and asked Dr Agutter if there was
any more of the tonic and he replied that there was some of his wife's
drink left.
At the ambulanceman's request Dr Agutter put the remainder of the
drink in a separate container, explaining that he would have to take it
with him for analysis.
Throughout, Dr Agutter had been calm and confident ''except when I
told him I would be taking the tonic water to hospital in the
container''.
The trial continues.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article