What we know about Dawn Sturgess's Novichok poisoning

A public inquiry will try to establish if Dawn Sturgess was 'caught in the crossfire of an illegal and outrageous international assassination attempt'.

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Dawn Sturgess, 44, died after being exposed to the chemical weapon left in a discarded perfume bottle. (Facebook)

A public inquiry into the death of Novichok poisoning victim Dawn Sturgess has heard that Vladimir Putin personally signed off on an assassination attempt that resulted in the death of an innocent British woman after she was accidentally given a perfume bottle with “enough poison to kill thousands of people”.

The inquiry, chaired by retired Supreme Court justice Lord Hughes of Ombersley, will sit all week in Salisbury and will look into exactly what led to the mother-of-three's death.

It will try to establish how a seemingly “innocent” British woman died after she was caught in the “crossfire of an illegal and outrageous international assassination attempt," Andrew O’Connor KC said.

“She was entirely unaware of the mortal danger she faced, because the highly toxic liquid had been concealed – carefully and deliberately concealed – inside a perfume bottle," O'Connor said.

“Moreover, the evidence will suggest that this bottle – which we shall hear contained enough poison to kill thousands of people – must earlier have been left somewhere in public place creating the obvious risk that someone would find it and take it home."

Sturgess was killed nearly four months after the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. In a witness statement read to the inquiry, Skripal said he believed Putin “must have at least given permission for the attack”, adding that any "any GRU commander taking a decision like this without Putin’s permission would have been severely punished".

The inquiry also heard how Wiltshire Police apologised to the family for wrongly suggesting that Sturgess was a “well known drug addict” and died of an overdose.

Here, Yahoo News recaps the Salisbury poisoning case.

Sturgess, 44, died after being exposed to the chemical weapon which was left in a discarded perfume bottle in Amesbury, Wiltshire, in July 2018, while her boyfriend, Charlie Rowley, fell critically ill.

It followed the attempted murder of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia and police officer Nick Bailey, who were poisoned in nearby Salisbury in March that year. All three survived, as did Sturgess’s boyfriend.

Sturgess collapsed at her partner Charlie Rowley’s home in Amesbury, eight miles from Salisbury, on 30 June 2018 after coming into contact with a perfume bottle containing Novichok.

Rowley told the Guardian that he'd found the perfume bottle in a charity shop, nearly four months after the poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury, and decided to give it to Sturgess as a gift.

As he tried to put the bottle and the applicator together, he got some of the contents on himself, which explains how he became unwell, the Salisbury Journal reported.

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Dawn Sturgess became seriously unwell 15 minutes after unknowingly spraying Novichok on her wrists. (Facebook)

Sturgess became unwell within 15 minutes of spraying the substance onto her wrists, her boyfriend told ITV News, recalling how she said she had a headache and asked for some tablets.

"I had a look around the flat and within that time she said she felt peculiar and needed to lie down in the bath, which at the time I thought was a bit strange," he said. "I went into the bathroom and found her in the bath, fully clothed, in a very ill state."

Rowley says the box of perfume he found was still sealed in a cellophane wrapper and said he was convinced that it looked legitimate.

"I think it was very irresponsible for people to leave the poison for anybody to pick up. It could have been children. It was just so unfortunate. I'm very angry at the whole incident," he added.

Police later confirmed the perfume bottle was not a genuine Nina Ricci product as advertised and that the box was counterfeit.

Wiltshire Police apologised to Sturgess' family for their "error" after wrongly identifying her condition as an overdose on the basis she was a “well known drug addict”, the inquiry heard on Monday.

Michael Mansfield KC, counsel on behalf of the family of Sturgess and Rowley, told the inquiry the information was false and “there was no intelligence that Dawn was a drug user”.

The inquiry also heard how Sturgess' family was not allowed to bury Dawn’s body as they wished. They were told "not to touch the coffin", and Sturgess had to be cremated.

On 4 March 2018, former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were found unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury.

Police at the time said a nerve agent was used to poison the pair and the case was being treated as attempted murder. The Skripals were thought to have come into contact with the substance on the handle of their front door.

FILE - In this March 12, 2018 file photo personnel in protective gear work on a van in Winterslow, England, as investigations continue into the nerve-agent poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, in Salisbury, England. The Skripals fell ill and spent weeks in critical condition. They survived, but the attack later claimed the life of a British woman and left a man and a police officer seriously ill. Authorities said they both were poisoned with the military grade nerve agent Novichok. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)
Personnel in protective gear investigate the 2018 poisoning. (Alamy)

Then-home secretary Amber Rudd announced on 8 March that Wiltshire Police officer Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey was seriously ill in hospital. He came into contact with the nerve agent while searching the Skripals' home with colleagues.

On 22 March DS Bailey was discharged from hospital, but said his life will "probably never be the same" after his ordeal. In 2020 he tweeted that after 18 years on the force, he had to "admit defeat" and accept he could no longer do his job, as he could no longer deal with being in a police environment.

Yulia Skripal was discharged from hospital on 10 April, followed by her father just over a month later, having both been in a critical condition in hospital.

Then-prime minister Theresa May told the House of Commons the nerve agent used - Novichok - is of Russian origin.

She said it was “highly likely” Russia was responsible for the poisoning and announced the UK would expel 23 Russian diplomats in response to the "unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the UK".

Not long after, Britain's allies took action, with more than 100 Russian agents sent home from 22 countries in what May described as the "largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history".

In September of that year, Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service said there was sufficient evidence to charge two Russians, Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, who used the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, with offences including conspiracy to murder over the attack.

Downing Street insisted they were GRU officers "who used a devastatingly toxic illegal chemical weapon on the streets of our country", but Russian president Vladimir Putin said there was "nothing criminal" about the pair.

In this video grab provided by the RT channel , Ruslan Boshirov, left, and Alexander Petrov attend their first public appearance in an interview with the Kremlin-funded RT channel in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2018. The two Russian men charged in Britain with poisoning a former Russian spy with a deadly nerve agent appeared on Russian television on Thursday, saying they visited the suspected crime scene as tourists. (RT channel video via AP)
Ruslan Boshirov (left) and Alexander Petrov insisted they were merely tourists who wanted to see Salisbury Cathedral. (AP)

Petrov and Boshirov were then interviewed by Russian state-funded news channel RT in which they claimed they were tourists visiting Salisbury on the recommendation of friends.

They portrayed themselves as a pair of sports nutrition salesmen who wanted to see Salisbury Cathedral and its beautiful 123-metre spire.

According to police, they'd landed at Gatwick Airport at around 3pm on 2 March, spent one night in a hotel in London and took the train from Waterloo to Salisbury at 11:45am the following morning.

In 2021 it was announced that a third Russian, Denis Sergeev, who used the alias Sergey Fedotov while in the UK, had been identified as a suspect.

An international arrest warrant was issued for the trio, but as the Russian constitution does not allow the extradition of its citizens, it is unlikely they will ever stand trial.

Fedotov flew from Heathrow to Moscow in the early afternoon of 4 March, 2018 while Petrov and Boshirov boarded a flight from the same airport at 10.30pm that night, the inquiry heard on Monday.

Adam Straw KC, counsel on behalf of Sturgess and Rowley's families, said the family “invite the chair to call Mr Putin as a witness, to give oral evidence to the inquiry”.

Earlier Straw referred to a witness statement by Jonathan Allen, a senior FCDO official, who said it is the government’s view that Putin “authorised the operation”.

“He should look Dawn’s family in the eyes and answer the evidence against him," Straw added. The inquiry chairman said it was an “an intriguing suggestion”, adding: “have I any power whatsoever to enforce it?”

Straw replied, “no I’m afraid not”.

The original inquest into Dawn Sturgess' death was opened in 2021, but was later changed to a public inquiry, at the request of the coroner, so that highly classified evidence could be heard.

Having started at Salisbury's Guildhall, it will later move to London, with the aim of understanding the circumstances leading to Sturgess' death, where responsibility lies, and to make recommendations where appropriate.

Ahead of the independent inquiry, Theresa May said "justice is unlikely" but that she hopes friends and family of Sturgess "will take some comfort" from the probe into her death.

In an interview with the BBC’s Crime Next Door: Salisbury Poisonings podcast, May said of the inquiry: "I would hope by the end of it the family and friends of Dawn Sturgess feel it has got to the truth."

The former PM said, however, that "closure to all the people affected would only finally come with justice, and that justice is highly unlikely to happen".

The judge leading the inquiry, Lord Hughes of Ombersley, said if Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia are identified and their current whereabouts are discovered, the risk of an attack on them "is not properly controllable".

In June a preliminary hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice heard that the Sturgess family wanted the Skripals to give oral evidence to address "unanswered questions" - but the judge has since ruled this out.

In his ruling this month, he said there is an "overwhelming risk" of a physical attack on the Skripals and that it would not be possible to maintain proper security if they appeared in person.

LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 23: Yulia Skripal speaks to a journalist on May 23, 2018 in London, United Kingdom.  Yulia Skripal was poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury along with her father, Russian spy Sergei Skripal.  In 2010 Sergei Skripal  was granted refuge in the UK following a 'spy swap' between the US and Russia.  (Photo by Dylan Martinez - WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Yulia Skripal was found collapsed on a bench next to her father. (Getty Images)

He said they could not even give evidence remotely as their location could be worked out. Lord Hughes of Ombersley wrote that the Skripals have provided further statements addressing specific questions raised by the Sturgess family and that transcripts of police interviews with the father and daughter had been disclosed.

"I am quite satisfied that the risk to both Skripals of physical attack clearly outweighs the advantage to the inquiry of their giving oral evidence," he continued.

"The disruption and intrusion into their private lives, whilst alone not sufficient to dictate the conclusion that they should not give evidence, adds to the balance a further reason why they should not."

The Sunday Times reported in 2020 that the pair had moved to New Zealand and been given new identities.