Forensic results announced on 7/5 confirmed that a food jar seized in Burgenland state contained 15 micrograms of rat poison. The Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES) stated that this dosage, while not immediately fatal, is potent enough to damage children's health, causing blood clotting disorders with symptoms such as bleeding gums, nosebleeds, or bloody stools.

Authorities arrested the Slovakian-born suspect, a father of three children, on 5/5. He is currently in solitary confinement with 24/7 camera surveillance for his safety, as other inmates are enraged by his actions targeting children.

The Salzburg city prosecutor's office accused the former manager of tampering with and injecting poison into jars of carrot and potato mix at several supermarkets in Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. He then sent messages demanding HiPP executives transfer 2 million EUR in cryptocurrency.

The suspect stored bags of poison next to a wooden playhouse on a balcony overlooking a lake. *Photo: Markus Tschepp*

The incident caused widespread panic, forcing over 1,500 stores in Austria to immediately recall products. To date, police have seized 5 poisoned food jars before they reached consumers, but authorities are concerned that at least one jar may still be on the market.

Searching the suspect's apartment in the Lake Wolfgang area, police seized several HiPP fruit jars, bags of rat poison, and red stickers used to mark contaminated jars, which investigators believe he took from his former workplace. Authorities are also extracting GPS data from the suspect's Range Rover to compare with the scenes at supermarkets in the three countries.

Investigators believe the extortion motive stemmed from personal financial crisis and workplace resentment. The suspect recently went through an expensive divorce, leaving him with substantial legal debt. Previously, the company had fired him from his branch manager position in Gmunden, where he earned 7,000 EUR per month, due to work misconduct. Notably, on 27/3, the day of the termination meeting, the suspect displayed unusually cheerful behavior. At exactly 11h55 that day, HiPP received an anonymous threat message: "Time is running out".

Despite numerous pieces of evidence from investigators, the former manager adamantly denies all charges of extortion and poisoning. Defense lawyer Manfred Arbacher-Stoger argued that his client owns a farm in Slovakia, so stockpiling rat poison for pest control is a normal activity. Austrian authorities are currently expanding their investigation, awaiting forensic results for the food jars collected in the Czech Republic and Slovakia to bring the case to trial soon.

The suspect is believed to have injected rat poison into 190-gram jars of carrot and potato mix from German manufacturer HiPP. *Photo: Tobias Steinmaurer/APA/dpa*

Binh Minh (According to Kronen Zeitung, Bild)