Cyanide-Laced Meals Kill 4 in Japan

Police launched a major investigation Sunday after dozens of people ate curry and rice contaminated with cyanide at a neighborhood festival in central Japan.

Four victims died, and at least 30 were treated at hospitals.

Police flooded Wakayama prefecture, 250 miles west of Tokyo, with 150 extra officers and began house-to-house searches for the source of the poison.

“We have yet to make any final determination about the case, but it appears that someone tainted the food or eating utensils with cyanide,” a police spokesman told Reuters. Mass murder could not be ruled out, he said.

“I don’t understand how this could have happened,” a festival-goer told TV Asahi.

“We all know each other, and I don’t remember seeing any strangers there. There were two people watching the food all the time until it was taken to the food stall.”

More than 100 people attended the summer festival, the local community’s main annual event, on a vacant lot in the Sonobe section of Wakayama city.

The first victims were rushed to the hospital about 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

Doctors on the scene said even a trace of cyanide will cause nausea within 15 minutes. The Wakayama victims suffered incessant vomiting, irregular heartbeat and numbness in the limbs.

The four who died Saturday night and Sunday morning were three males and a female, ranging in age from 10 to 64, a police spokesman said.

The curry dish had been sold for $1.10 a portion. Enough was prepared to feed 100 people.