A Chinese teacher was sentenced to death for poisoning 25 students with sodium nitrite after a brawl with their teacher.
The incident happened in the central Chinese province of Henan last year in March. Wang Yun was arrested and charged with “intentional injury” after adding sodium nitrite to students’ breakfast.
Yun poisoned the colleague’s students after falling out with her at the school. She spiked the children’s porridge with sodium nitrite, which made 25 children ill and left one child dead.
“The kids said the porridge tasted salty,” a parent of one of the surviving children said.
According to the American Journal of Public Health, sodium nitrite is generally used as a dye or for curing meats. When ingested in large amounts, it can be fatal.
The court termed Yun’s actions “despicable and vicious,” and ordered her to be “severely punished in accordance with the law.”
This isn’t the first time she used sodium nitrate as poisoning as she had poured nitrate into her husband’s drink in 2017. He survived but had minor health issues.
“Wang Yun knew that sodium nitrite was harmful to the human body, but in order to retaliate against others, she administered sodium nitrite twice,” the court ruling read. Her death sentence will be carried out by either lethal injection or a firing squad, according to reports.
