A Chinese graduate student at the University of Wyoming has been arrested at Los Angeles International Airport, accused of poisoning a Vietnamese colleague's tea with a neurotoxin before trying to fly home.
Aili Wang, 32, was taken into custody on Oct. 6, a day after campus police questioned her. She was carrying multiple laptops, portable hard drives, physical records and written materials, prosecutors said in a court filing reported by Cowboy State Daily.
Prosecutors argued that if she reached China, there would be no reliable way to bring her back, because the U.S. has no extradition agreement with Beijing.
Judge Robert Sanford of the Albany County Circuit Court granted their request to sharply raise her bond from $200,000 and require it in cash. Wang remained jailed in Los Angeles as of Oct. 13, and it is unclear when she will be extradited to Wyoming.
She faces one felony count of aggravated assault and battery, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Court documents list no attorney for her.
According to a campus police affidavit cited by the outlet, the victim, identified in court documents as K.T., began to feel tingling and numbness in his fingertips and weakness in his legs on Aug. 10. The numbness later spread through his left arm, and he sought help at the university's student health clinic.
Suspecting poison, his wife and others had water tested from the small coffee maker he used to brew tea in the office he shared with Wang. Boiling down 100 milliliters left 63 milligrams of white powder that tested positive for acrylamide, the affidavit says, while water from other sources in the building tested negative.
Acrylamide forms when starchy foods are cooked at high temperatures and is used in laboratory work on proteins and DNA. In high doses it is acutely toxic and damages the nervous system.
K.T., his supervisor and campus police then set up hidden cameras in the office. On the night of Sept. 27, one recorded Wang going through K.T.'s desk and inspecting his coffee tin.
On Oct. 1, cameras caught her rinsing his mug with liquid from her own mug, looking into his coffee maker, and taking photos and "manipulating notebooks" on his desk, the affidavit says.
Wang's university email account was used to order acrylamide on eBay on June 27 and Aug. 24. On Oct. 5, the day police interviewed her, the account asked eBay to delete its order history and the account itself. Wang told the detective she "had not used acrylamide in years."
The affidavit says the two did not get along and that Wang had no reason to go through K.T.'s desk. His federally funded, patent-pending research involves new technology to treat cancer and neurological and genetic diseases.
Their research fields no longer overlap, but Wang had worked on similar research in China before coming to the U.S., according to the document.
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Aili Wang at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming, May 2, 2024. Photo courtesy of Mark Gomelsky via AP |
Mark Gomelsky, the professor who oversees both students, told the Associated Press that K.T. is a highly successful student from Vietnam.
He said Wang had failed her first attempt to defend her dissertation and became envious of K.T.'s success in discovering how to deliver RNA to human cells using bacteria.
K.T. had noticed a strange taste in his tea that went away whenever he washed the coffee maker, Gomelsky said. He added that Wang had not done lab work since June while she worked on her dissertation.
The agency also quoted Tak Suyama, an assistant professor of chemistry who helped identify the toxin, as saying K.T. was working on "a pretty promising cancer therapy method" and that Wang photographed every page of a notebook he had left on his desk.
"You wouldn't do that with like your office or lab mate's notebook unless there's a really good reason, and there wasn't," Suyama said.
K.T. still struggles to focus, tires easily and has lost sensation in his left hand, Gomelsky said.
"Acrylamide is a neurotoxin that cannot be neutralized so it stays in neurons and basically kills them. So it's unclear if he'll fully recover or not," he said.
The university said in a statement that it is following its student conduct process and working with authorities, and that the allegations are unproven and Wang is presumed innocent.