Results tagged “poisoning”

Maureen Steeves died yesterday at Brookhaven Hospital, days after her husband David Steeves was arrested for poisoning her with cyanide that he allegedly poured in her coffee two weeks ago. It seems likely that a grand jury will now up the attempted murder charges against him to homicide. Steeves pleaded not guilty and was denied bail. He's now being held in isolation in a Riverhead jail. The couple's two teenage sons, whom Steeves shared the web sites where he learned about cyanide with, are staying with their late mother's brother for the time being.

The Suffolk County police say that David Steeves admitted to poisoning his estranged wife. Det. Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick said, "It all happened since he told her he was gay... He told us that he didn't want to see her with anyone else." On Oct. 18, Steeves apparently put cyanide (bought on the Internet) in Maureen Steeves' coffee and left the house. When he returned, she was on the floor and he brought her to the hospital. Two days later, he took their sons to England; police arrested him today at a bank near JFK Airport. Steeves' lawyer said his client was innocent, "He says the police roughed him up and forced him to give a confession." However, police say that Steeves "looked at Web sites that showed among other things if cyanide would show up in an autopsy." Maureen Steeves is still in the hospital; charges against him will likely be upgraded if she dies.

Emerson wrote that the "surest poison is time," but for Dru D'Amico, a teacher at the Talented and Gifted School for Young Scholars, the white powder a student slipped into her water bottle was also pretty cruel. D'Amico was taken to the hospital Wednesday after a pupil spiked her water with calcium hydroxide. The substance is used to make cement, but in this case it went to enhance that special bond of mistrust and contempt that's the hallmark of any real teacher/student relationship. Also, ingesting enough can cause internal bleeding, hypertension, and skeletal muscle paralysis. D'Amico was later released, and police have charged the 13-year-old with reckless endangerment, NY1 reports. Of course, this isn't the first time teachers have been poisoned by their scheming, bloodthirsty students: Remember the hilarious laxative cake prank?

On Friday, dozens of birds fell out of the sky and died on a street in the Great Kills section of Staten Island. Residents grew concerned as, the Staten Island Advance reported, birds "flopped and twitched...as they breathed their last" (video here). One resident said the birds were flying "as if they were drunk" before falling to the ground.

Steven Sakai, the bouncer who went on a shooting rampage in front of Opus 22 in Chelsea last year, was found guilty of two other murders yesterday and acquitted in a third killing. From the accounts we've read, Sakai was his own worst enemy throughout the legal process, beginning with implicating himself in three killings as police questioned him about his role in the May 2006 shooting of four patrons outside the club where he...