Man Arrested after Girl, 3, Died from Eating Poisoned Cereal, Another Child Hospitalized

A man was apprehended by Toronto Police and levied with multiple charges concerning the case of a little girl poisoned with a controlled substance.

The Toronto Police have released a public statement concerning the March 2021 case over a poisoning investigation. A little girl was said to have died at the time the crime was perpetrated.

The statement read that the police and the Ontario Coroner's Office commenced an investigation and came up with several deductions on how the poisoning occurred.

The information noted that a middle-aged man gained access to a controlled substance at his place of work. The substance was then added to a children's breakfast cereal.

Afterward, two little children ate from the cereal during breakfast. The kids who were on a sleepover were both taken to the hospital.

One of them died, while the other was hospitalized for an extended period before recuperation. The man, now identified as 45-year-old Francis Ngugi, from Toronto, has been apprehended.

Ngugi was charged with two counts of administering noxious substances to endanger lives, two counts of unlawfully causing bodily harm, and criminal negligence that led to death.

The late child identified as Bernice was said to have been quickly affected by the cereal. Her mother, Maurine Mirembe, recalled that her daughter became weak.

The dad-of-two meant to poison his kids to get life insurance money.

She noted that by the time Bernice was taken to the hospital, she had difficulty breathing and was looking ashen. An autopsy conducted revealed the presence of the controlled substance.

Police have not been able to determine if the incident was accidental or intentional. Authorities conducted further investigations to determine that the accused was familiar to the affected family.

A similar case unearthed from 1974 was about a father who caused the death of his son by poisoning his candy. It had been Halloween when Ronald Clark O'Brien murdered his 8-year-old son, Timothy.

After the O'Brien family had dinner with another family on Halloween, they sent their kids on their way for a candy collection. However, Ronald caught up with the kids and gave them straws of Pixy Stix.

While the other kids hadn't eaten theirs, Timothy ate his, and that night at home, he complained of stomach ache before his health later deteriorated.

During the investigations, Ronald's story did not add up, and authorities later discovered the motive. The dad-of-two meant to poison his kids to get life insurance money.

Similarly, a kindergarten teacher in China was sentenced to death for poisoning some kids in the school. The teacher, Wang Yun, meant to poison a fellow teacher.

Yun put sodium nitrate in some bowls of porridge that were for a fellow teacher. However, the teacher served the kids the bowls' content leading to 25 of them becoming ill and one of the kids eventually dying.