Roads shut after 2 fall ill in UK city where ex-spy poisoned

Associated Press

LONDON

Police closed roads and called a hazardous-response team Sunday night after two people became ill at a restaurant in the English city where a Russian ex-spy and his daughter were poisoned with a chemical nerve agent.

Wiltshire Police described the emergency steps taken in response to “a medical incident” in Salisbury as a precaution. Authorities later lifted the alert and said no evidence of the nerve agent Novichok involved in the earlier case was found when the two ill people were examined at a hospital.

Salisbury spent months with quarantine tents and investigators in full-body protective gear combing for evidence after Sergei Skripal and his adult daughter were found unconscious on a bench in March.

Its residents were put back on edge in June when a man and a woman living in a nearby town were hospitalized with signs of exposure to the same Soviet-made Novichok. The woman, 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess, died.

Britain’s counter-terrorism police said this month they think Sturgess’ boyfriend found a counterfeit perfume bottle containing remnants of the substance originally applied on the front door of Skripals home in Salisbury.