China: Two kindergarten girls die after rival principal poisons yogurt

USPA News - Two young girls in northern China have died after they drank from a bottle of yogurt that had been deliberately poisoned by the principal of a rival kindergarten, local police said on Thursday. The rival principal has confessed to poisoning the bottle.

The school principal of a kindergarten in the village of Lianghe, located in Pingshan County of northern China`s Hebei province, is accused of injecting rat poison into a bottle of yogurt on the morning of April 24. She then asked a man to place the bottle along with two new notebooks along a street near a rival kindergarten. The books and bottle were found shortly after by a grandmother who brought them home. After her two granddaughters returned home later in the afternoon, they both shared the bottle of yogurt. The children were later found suffering from convulsions while foaming from their mouths. The state-run Xinhua news agency said one of the girls died while being transported to a local hospital, and the second girl died on Wednesday. Investigators said the principal confessed to injecting the rat poison into the yogurt, apparently because the two schools were competing for students from the village. Both the principal and the man who placed the bottle have been arrested by local authorities, Xinhua reported, adding that an investigation is continuing.