According to investigators, the man put his family in danger because he placed an anti-rodent agent in the walls of the house. A three-year-old girl died. The father was charged and could face up to five years in prison.
On November 6, the police in Nowy Tomyśl received a report about the death of a three-year-old child in the local hospital. The girl was taken to the hospital with symptoms of poisoning. Her mother and seven-year-old sister were also hospitalized. According to the officers' findings, a few hours before the poisoning, a chemical anti-rodent agent was placed in the external elements of the building where they lived in the town of Ujazd in the Grodzisk district. Investigators suspected that strong fumes may have caused the family's poisoning.
The autopsy did not reveal the cause of the child's death. Investigators therefore ordered additional tests.
Charges against the father
The spokesman for the District Prosecutor's Office in Poznań, Prosecutor Łukasz Wawrzyniak, said on Wednesday that despite the lack of test results explaining the cause of the three-year-old's death, investigators charged her father with exposure to an imminent danger of loss of life or serious bodily harm to both the suspect's wife and two his daughters.
The prosecutor said that the dead girl's father placed anti-rodent tablets in the space between the building wall and its insulation. – Contact of the substance with air and moisture resulted in the release of phosphine – added prosecutor Wawrzyniak.
The man did not plead guilty to the crime he was accused of and refused to provide explanations.
They check the provision of assistance
The commission appointed by the Voivode of Greater Poland assessed that the decision of the medical dispatcher, who did not send an ambulance to the site of the family's poisoning, was inappropriate “due to lack of diligence in collecting medical history.” She also noted that “at this stage it is not possible to say whether it would have been possible to save the child if the emergency medical team had been dispatched and arrived in the shortest possible time.”
When asked about these issues, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office said that investigators would most likely use the commission's findings. He added that the issue of objections regarding the appropriate provision of assistance to the family may be examined in a separate proceeding.
Main photo source: TVN24