Boba enthusiasts might need to be more vigilant before slurping up free milk tea in the future.
On January 3, Thai Binh police announced that they were moving forward with a case against 25-year-old Lai Thi Kieu Trang, a resident of Kien Xuong District in the northern province, reports Tuoi Tre. She is facing a murder charge because a female victim died after drinking a cup of bubble tea allegedly supplied by Trang.
The “boba murder” has been garnering a lot of public interest since it made national news. The poisoning took place a month ago, in early December; early reports show that it was carried out because of an illicit romance gone rancid.
According to Lao Dong, during the second half of 2019, Trang was engaged in a tryst with Q*, the husband of her cousin, Y*. In October, Q decided to end the affair. Trang was upset and purchased two bottles of cyanide online with the intention of committing suicide. However, she had a change of heart and hatched a plan to kill Y out of jealousy instead.
Knowing Y’s love of bubble tea, on December 2, Trang ordered six cups of the drink online and injected the poison into four of them. She used a burner SIM card to get the beverages delivered to Y’s workplace, Thai Binh Lung Hospital, along with some fruit and a money envelop. This was to make the gifts appear like they were from a grateful patient.
Because Y was not present, another nurse accepted the drinks and put them in the department’s staff refrigerator. The following morning, H*, a nurse at the hospital, took one of the cups for herself. She collapsed after a sip and was declared dead soon after despite medical help. At the time, it was thought to be a stroke, so the victim’s family decided against an autopsy.
Over the course of the investigation, however, local police suspected foul play was involved. They took Trang into custody on December 26 and exhumed H’s body on December 31 to conduct an autopsy, which confirmed the presence of cyanide.
Apart from H, two other nurses also drank the bubble tea, but they luckily picked the only two cups that weren’t poisoned and narrowly escaped an a-boba-minable demise.
*The newspaper only provided the initials of those involved.
