Six people reportedly died under suspicious circumstances in a mass cyanide poisoning incident at a hotel in Thailand on Monday, and authorities said an Auckland woman among the dead was the suspected culprit.
Two of the dead were Americans, including Oakland resident Shereen Chung, and the other four were Vietnamese, according to Bangkok police. According to The Washington Post.
According to reports, the group were found dead in room 502 of the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel, with food still untouched on the table and police found empty cups with traces of cyanide.
Police said Cheong was the only person in the room when hotel staff brought tea and food to the room at about 2pm on Monday. The other five entered the room later.
Police believe Chong laced the tea with cyanide in an attempt to kill himself and five others over a financial dispute. The Bangkok Post reported..
This photo released by Thai police shows leftover food on the table in a room at the Grand Hyatt Erawan hotel where six people were found dead in a suspected murder-suicide.
(Royal Thai Police/Associated Press)
A housekeeper discovered the bodies after the guests failed to check out on Tuesday, police said. Two of the bodies were in the bedroom and four in the living room.
In one photo taken at the scene, with food on a table in the hotel room, one of the victim’s feet can be seen on the ground.
The head of the forensic medicine department at Chulalongkorn University’s medical faculty said cyanide was found in the blood of all six. According to the Associated Press.
Police said Chong recruited five others to invest more than $250,000 in construction projects, including a hospital project in Japan, some of whom filed lawsuits against him after the projects failed to progress, according to the Bangkok Post.
The six were due to go on trial in two weeks and Chong invited them to meet for negotiations. They met in Bangkok and stayed in different rooms at a hotel. They all died while in Chong’s room, according to the Bangkok Post.
The Bangkok Post identified the other victims as Dang Hung Van, 55; Tran Dinh Phu, 37; Nguyen Thi Huong Lan, 47; and the couple: Nguyen Thi Huong, 46; and Pham Hong Thanh, 49.
