In the Spring Festival of 2022, a 1-year-old baby girl named Amathallium in Fujian was poisoned. The police found out that it was poisoned by her aunt Wang Xia’s milk powder, and her father Lin Jianwei’s death more than half a year ago was identified as colchicine poisoning.
Today, Amao is quadriplegic, has many sequelae and is often hospitalized.
In September 2023, Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Wang Xia to death for intentional homicide. Red Star News learned that the Fujian High Court, the second instance of this case, opened in April 2024 and has not yet pronounced a verdict.
▲ Video screenshot of Amao’s first birthday banquet. Respondents provide
The Lins and Amao’s mother Yang Zao didn’t forgive Wang Xia. At first, the family couldn’t believe that Wang Xia had poisoned it, and they couldn’t understand it.
"I have a good home, what is it like for her?" Huang Yue, the grandmother of the child, insisted that Wang Xia should be sentenced to death.
The Lins opened a shop in Fuzhou, and the conditions at home were good. The first-instance judgment obtained by Red Star News shows that the court found that Wang Xia poisoned because he was dissatisfied with the store in his home and distributed it to his brother-in-law.
Online shopping thallium nitrate poisoning
The baby girl who just turned 1 year old was poisoned after eating milk powder.
According to the judgment of the first instance, Wang Xia has searched for information about thallium nitrate, colchicine and other poisons many times, and also searched for online information such as "My husband and children are dead, can I inherit the property of my in-laws?"
According to public information, thallium is a slow-onset toxic substance with hidden symptoms. Thallium is colorless and tasteless after being dissolved in water, and it is not easy to detect after being drunk by people.
According to the judgment of the first instance, in November 2021, Wang Xia spent 465 yuan to buy 3 grams of colchicine online from a trading company in Xi ‘an. Wang Xia confessed that when she bought it, she tried it too hard and dumped it, and then she bought thallium nitrate. At the same time, she said that she had previously brushed a case of someone poisoning with thallium on the video website, and she had the idea of poisoning the algae with thallium. In January 2022, Wang Xia bought 25 grams of thallium nitrate from the above-mentioned company through WeChat for 1700 yuan.
The judgment of the first instance shows that at the end of January 2022, Wang Xia returned to his hometown for the New Year with his husband’s family. Wang Xia confessed that she didn’t have a chance to poison her just a few days before she returned to the village. Later, she learned that her mother-in-law was going to give Amao a one-year-old banquet. She was very angry and had the idea of throwing thallium nitrate to Amao.
On February 4, 2022, just after Amao’s first birthday, at noon that day, Wang Xia threw thallium nitrate into Amao’s milk powder jar while others went out to eat at home. On the same day, Amao suffered from diarrhea and fever after eating milk powder, and was sent to the clinic for treatment, and then transferred to Fuzhou Children’s Hospital for treatment.
Thallium was detected in Amao blood, Yang Zao blood, milk bottle, milk powder and Wang Xia’s toilet.
Amao was in a coma for a while, and he was diagnosed in PICU for a week. On February 22, 2022, a young man in the Lins’ family sent Weibo to ask for medicine online. "Prussian blue, the antidote to thallium, is rare." The young man told Red Star News that he contacted a hospital in Beijing with the help of the Internet and took 10 bottles of medicine.
Huang Yue, the grandmother of the child, said that she had never thought that her little granddaughter and younger son were poisoned. After the hospital found thallium poisoning, it told them or artificially poisoned them, but they didn’t believe it. Finally, the hospital called the police.
In the early morning of February 28th of the same year, Wang Xia was arrested at his residence. The verdict shows that Wang Xia denied poisoning at the beginning of the day, and then confessed to poisoning Amao.
Lin Jianxiong, the child’s uncle, said that he was arrested together and was later released from suspicion.
Brother in law died "accidentally"
He was identified as poisoned and died of multiple organ failure.
After Wang Xia was arrested, he confessed to poisoning brother in law, and the "accidental" death of Amao’s father Lin Jianwei was brought out more than half a year ago.
According to the judgment of the first instance, on March 10, 2021, Wang Xia spent 775 yuan online to buy 5 grams of colchicine from the above trading company through WeChat. On March 18th, Wang Xia secretly pinched a pinch of colchicine at the store and put it in Lin Jianwei’s rice bowl. After eating it, Lin Jianwei felt bitter and spit it out, thinking that the bought clam was not fresh. Lin Jianwei suffered from severe diarrhea that night and went to the clinic.
At the beginning of June of that year, Lin Jianwei suffered from gastrointestinal discomfort again. On June 25th, Lin Jianwei drank beer and ate two crayfish at home in the evening. He went to the hospital for diarrhea and vomiting the next day and was treated as appendicitis. On June 27th, he was transferred to the First Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University. Only two days later, Lin Jianwei died after being rescued, and the body was cremated the next day.
At that time, the Lin family thought it was an emergency, and they didn’t do autopsy, but the doctor took Lin Jianwei’s blood sample and sent it to Shenzhen for pathogenic microorganism examination. Keep the blood sample as the key evidence afterwards.
The judgment of the first instance shows that in March 2022, thallium was not detected in the ashes of Lin Jianwei, and the colchicine content in blood isolates (plasma) and (blood cells) in its retained blood samples exceeded the lethal blood concentration.
An expert review opinion from a judicial expertise center showed that Lin Jianwei was eligible to die of multiple organ failure caused by colchicine poisoning. According to the materials submitted for inspection, the possibility of poisoning again before his death is not ruled out.
judgement of first instance
Aunt was sentenced to death and paid more than 700 thousand yuan.
In April 2023, Fuzhou People’s Procuratorate filed a public prosecution against Wang Xia, and Amao and Yang Zao filed an incidental civil lawsuit. In May 2023, Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court heard the case in the first instance.
One of the focuses of the trial was whether Wang Xia poisoned Lin Jianwei to death for the second time, and Wang Xia did not admit the second poisoning.
According to the judgment of the first instance, Wang Xia’s defender suggested that there was no evidence that Wang Xia put colchicine again after March 2021, which was a crime suspension. In addition, although colchicine was found in blood samples, Lin Jianwei’s body was not dissected and the cause of death was unknown; The expert review opinion is not an expert conclusion and cannot be used as evidence.
In this regard, the court of first instance held that the opinions of experts can be accepted as inspection reports. Although Wang Xia didn’t confess to poisoning Lin Jianwei again, other evidences confirmed each other to form a chain of evidence to prove his poisoning again, which was enough to confirm that Lin Jianwei’s death was caused by Wang Xia’s poisoning. There are no other possible death cases found in the existing evidence, so it should be recognized that there is a causal relationship between Wang Xia’s poisoning behavior and Lin Jianwei’s death result in criminal law.
Defenders have suggested that Lin Jianwei had drunk beer and taken cephalosporins before his death, and the improper use of drugs could not be ruled out. The court held that poisoning itself was enough to kill, even if the above-mentioned behavior had an impact on the death result, it was too small to block the causal relationship between Wang Xia’s poisoning behavior and the victim’s death result.
Regarding poisoning Amao, Wang Xia argued that after accidentally shaking all the thallium nitrate into the milk powder can, he was worried that Amao would die after eating it and dug up half of it. The court held that after searching for information such as the lethal dose of thallium nitrate for many times, knowing that thallium was still poisoned to death, Wang Xia should be considered as a crime of intentional homicide, which was an attempted crime.
▲ Wang Wei was sentenced to death in the first instance. Respondents provide
The court sentenced Wang Xia to death for intentional homicide in the first instance. In the incidental civil action, the court supported compensation of more than 700,000 yuan.
Mr. Chen, an insider close to the trial of the case, said that Wang Xia had a strong willingness to get rid of the crime, repented in court and cried bitterly. Mr. Chen revealed that Wang Xia failed to seek the Lins’ understanding.
According to Huang Yue, the grandmother of the child, the Wangs never apologized after the incident, and the two families blamed each other.
However, Yang Zao admitted that Lin Jianxiong didn’t know about it. She said that the two brothers had a "good relationship", and the elder brother didn’t expect his wife to do such a thing.
The entanglement behind serial poisoning
At first instance, it was found that there was a conflict between family and sister-in-law.
As for the reasons for poisoning, the judgment of the first instance shows that according to the testimony of witnesses, Wang Xia and Lin Jianwei’s family have real estate interest conflicts and emotional contradictions. Wang Xia poisoned Lin Jianwei because he was dissatisfied with the store’s distribution to his brother-in-law and wanted to fight for more benefits; Poisoning Amao was because she was dissatisfied that Amao inherited the property right of the store after Lin Jianwei’s death, which had a conflict with her sister-in-law, Yang Zao.
In this regard, Lin Jianxiong explained that his parents verbally said that the old house and storefront were given to his younger brother, and the better house on the riverside was given to himself. Both suites were more than 100 square meters.
In Lin Jianxiong’s description, Wang Xia has a strong personality. He asked for a storefront before, but he didn’t buy it at home. According to Huang Yue’s testimony, she heard her sister say that Wang Xia said that the store should be half-owned.
Lin Jianxiong’s testimony shows that Wang Xia believes that her mother-in-law is partial to her sister-in-law. Yang Zao also admits that the relationship between the two sisters-in-law is not good, but they live separately and don’t meet much.
According to Yang Zao, in court, Wang Xia admitted that she was fighting for property, and also accused her mother-in-law and husband of being bad to her. Yang Zao commented that Huang Yue is a good mother-in-law.
Lin Jianxiong said frankly that he and Wang Xia were engaged to get a certificate in less than a month, and they didn’t have much emotional foundation, but they had three children and there would be "fetters". He is very busy in business, leaving early and returning late, and sometimes when he doesn’t come home, Wang Xia loses his temper and vents his dissatisfaction with him.
Yang Zao said that she and Lin Jianwei met on blind dates, but they had a good relationship. Yang Zao had never found that the delay in separation would produce such a big contradiction before. Recalling afterwards that her husband had told her "to go to Nanping", she regretted not leaving.
In the eyes of the villagers, Wang Xia is beautiful, tall and white, "elegant" and has few words.
"What is the state of Wang Xia’s heart, whether he is kind to the world, and whether he has close people, it is hard to say." Mr. Chen said that his evaluation of Wang Xia’s husband-wife relationship is not high.
Wang Xia’s father, brother and aunt all refused the interview request of Red Star News.
Two years after the poisoning incident:
The girl is often hospitalized with limp limbs, and her mother runs away to make a living.
The judgment of the first instance shows that after identification, when the incident occurred nearly one year ago, Amathallium poisoning caused serious sequelae such as quadriplegia, which was identified as a serious injury and constituted a first-class disability.
The appraisal certificate issued nearly a year after the incident shows that Amao still has problems such as poor consciousness, backward development of large sports, unstable head-up, inability to turn over and poor control ability. The hospitalization certificate of Fuzhou Children’s Hospital in Fujian Province diagnosed him with severe pneumonia, sequelae of toxic encephalopathy, symptomatic epilepsy (secondary epilepsy) and so on.
▲ Amao is currently quadriplegic and has many sequelae. Photo by Hu Yiwen
When the reporter saw Amao, she had just left the hospital. At the age of 3, her limbs are limp and her fingers are stiff. When she sits up straight, her head hangs down and she doesn’t react much to the outside world. Huang Yue said that she "smiles when she is in a good mood". Nanny introduced that feeding can only break feeding, and it takes an hour to eat a meal.
Lin Jianxiong said that in fact, Amao’s organs, including lungs, have failed. She has no resistance and can’t go out. If she is not careful, she will catch a cold and have a fever, and she will be admitted to ICU for eight times out of ten hospitalizations.
The pain of one death and one serious injury in this family continues to this day. Recently, Amao was hospitalized with pneumonia and went to ICU again. Huang Yue said that after asking many hospitals, there was no good treatment. In the past two years, I have spent about 500,000 to 600,000 yuan on Amao, not counting the nanny fee.
The Lins are still waiting for the verdict of the second instance. Lin Jianxiong said that considering the issue of property distribution, he chose not to divorce Wang Xia first.
The Red Star journalist learned that Yang Zao returned to her family shortly after Amao was poisoned, and Amao was taken care of by the Lin family after that. Yang Zao said that since her husband died, she began to have conflicts with the Lin family, and she could not stay in the Lin family after the relationship broke down. She has to work to make a living now, and she can’t take Amao. She only visits the nanny occasionally every month, and she rarely meets the Lin family.
"It’s been two years, and I haven’t fully recovered." Yang Zao said that she loves her daughter very much. "I hope she will never suffer from illness."
Wang Xia, a junior high school student, just spent his 30th birthday in a detention center. (At the request of the interviewees, all the interviewees in this article are pseudonyms.)
