Singaporean scholarship student kicked out of Stanford over poisoning charges
[UPDATED 1:15pm, April 9]: Ouyang will appear in a Palo Alto court on May 15. This will be her fifth court appearance since she was first hauled up last December.
Stanford University has expelled Ouyang Xiangyu, the Singaporean Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) scholarship student who was recently charged with poisoning her classmates.
According to a Straits Times report, Stanford confirmed that Ouyang is no longer a student at the university.
27-year-old Ouyang, a member of the Nusse Laboratory at the university's developmental biology department, had been charged with four counts of poisoning the drinking water of lab mates at the university University.
According to court documents, Ouyang, who was described as “quiet and shy” by her colleagues, started showing problematic signs in August last year when she allegedly started sabotaging a lab mate’s experiment.
Between September and November, the accusations of poisoning surfaced. Two female graduate student researchers in the same lab as Ouyang said they experienced burning sensations in their throats after drinking the water in their bottles.
They also found that the water smelt of paraformaldehyde (PFA), a strong-smelling chemical classified as a probable human carcinogen (a substance that causes cancer) by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and was available in the lab where they worked. It is also used as a preservative in mortuaries as it preserves tissue samples.
When the police questioned her in November, Ouyang admitted that she added PFA to at least two bottles that did not belong to her. That same month, Ouyang was banned from Stanford's California campus.
She was later charged for poisoning, but is now out on US$50,000 (S$68,000) bail and not allowed to leave the country. Ouyang is expected to submit a 'not guilty' plea, using insanity as a defence.
Ouyang also claimed she suffered from severe insomnia and dizzy spells and had consulted a psychiatrist for help. She insisted that she never wanted to harm anyone.
Her actions were “a cry for help”, she said, and claimed she had little control over them.
According to California law, she could face between two and five years in jail if found guilty. Another three years could be added if the poison involved can cause "great bodily harm or death".
The former Temasek Junior College student is originally from China. She was expected to complete her A*Star National Science Scholarship PhD studies by 2018 and return to Singapore to complete her bond.
