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Home / New Zealand

RSA pleads guilty for poisoning of elderly woman

Herald on Sunday
10 Nov, 2012 04:30 PM2 mins to read

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Heatha Anderson (left) and Nola Murphy. Photo / NZ Herald

Heatha Anderson (left) and Nola Murphy. Photo / NZ Herald

The Avondale RSA and one of its cleaners have pleaded guilty to charges relating to the poisoning of an elderly customer.

Nola Murphy ordered a Sprite Zero from the Avondale Returned Services' Association club on her 73rd birthday in February, but was given a bottle filled with a toxic chemical, benzalkonium chloride.

The chemical is commonly used for clearing pipes.

Cleaner Julie Taipeti pleaded guilty to breaching food-safety regulations in the Waitakere District Court, while the RSA pleaded guilty to selling a substance that wasn't fit for human consumption and keeping a poisonous substance in a food container. Both will be sentenced in the Waitakere District Court in January.

Murphy, speaking after the guilty pleas, said she was relieved it was her, and not a child, who had drunk the chemical, which had been left on the bar five weeks earlier by Taipeti and later put in the fridge by a bartender.

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"What if it had been given to a child or a smaller woman? They would have never come out of it," Murphy told the Herald on Sunday.

She does not drink Sprite anymore and if she buys a drink she always tests it.

"I've learnt put your finger in the drink then taste it."

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She felt her head "explode" within seconds of swallowing the fizzy, clear liquid. "I couldn't even say 'help me'. I couldn't speak because my throat was closed off. I could hear what was going on around me but I couldn't talk or breathe.

"All I thought was my daughter is coming home (from London) to see me in a box."

Her friend Heatha Anderson, 61, also sipped the drink but spat it out before she experienced a similar reaction. Both women were taken to Auckland City Hospital for treatment.

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