Trial opens in E China fatal kindergarten poisoning case

SHIJIAZHUANG - A public trial opened in a poisoning case that resulted in the deaths of two kindergartners in April 2013 in north China's Hebei Province, a local court said on Monday.

According to the Shijiazhuang People's Procuratorate, a kindergarten head, Shi Haixia, and her accomplice, Yang Wenming, are suspected of the crime of "delivering dangerous materials," the city's intermediate people's court said.

Shi instigated Yang to buy a bottle of rat poison and injected it into yogurt, which was placed together with some notebooks on a roadside leading to a rival kindergarten in Lianghe Village in Pingshan County on April 24, 2013.

The poisoning was motivated by the two kindergartens' competition for students in the same village.

Two girls died after drinking a bottle of the yogurt after their grandmother picked up the yogurt and notebooks and brought them home.

The girls shared the yogurt with their grandmother and they all were found foaming at the mouth and suffering convulsions.

Both of the girls died and their grandmother was discharged from the hospital after receiving medical treatment.

Zhang Zengxia, the vendor of the rat poison, is also suspected of the crime of selling dangerous materials.

The trial verdict will be issued later, according to the procuratorate.