Daily Mail
April 2, 2014
A dental nurse poisoned her boss’s coffee with mercury after being disciplined for leaving a patient in the chair while she went out for lunch, a court has heard.
Ravinder Kaur, 35, allegedly spiked Laura Knowles’ hot drink with the metal used to make fillings in an act of ‘spite and revenge’.
Ms Knowles panicked and went as ‘white as a ghost’, in front of her colleagues at the Shams Moopen Dental Practice in Shefford, Bedfordshire, Blackfriars Crown Court heard.
The practice manager was taken to hospital, after complaining stomach cramps after downing the noxious drink.
Prosecutor Laura Blackband told the court: ‘The Crown’s case is that Ms Kaur, acting out of spite or revenge, took a capsule or a number of capsules of mercury, and tipped it into a mug and handed the cup of coffee to Ms Knowles to drink.
‘Ms Knowles sipped the coffee halfway through when she realised something wasn’t right with it.
‘She tipped it and threw it away in the sink and saw it was mercury at the bottom.
‘Her reaction was panic – she thought she had been poisoned.
‘She went straight to the hospital suffering stomach cramps, some stomach pain, but luckily no long term effects.’
In the days before the incident Kaur had been disciplined for leaving a patient in a dental chair while she took her lunch break, the court was told.
There had been several ‘disagreements with colleagues’ and the dental nurse had been involved in a tribunal two months before she allegedly spiked her boss’s drink.