A 41-year-old man, Makoto Kuroda, who is a researcher at the University of Wisconsin, United States, has admitted to attempting to poison a colleague he had been upset with due to promotion matter.

Envy can push people into doing despicable things to their fellow men, but you rarely hear about someone trying to take the life of a coworker over a promotion.

And that was the accusation currently faced by the researcher who allegedly tried to poison his colleague he had become upset with following a promotion that he felt was undeserved.

Makoto Kuroda has been charged with recklessly endangering safety and tampering with a household product “with the intent to kill, injure or otherwise endanger the health” of another person.

This was after he admitted to lacing the colleague’s water bottle with paraformaldehyde and chloroform.

Kuroda and the victim, identified only by his initials, TM, had met in 2017 and had worked together at the university’s Influenza Research Institute in Madison for five years.

The two had been pretty close, but had drifted apart over time to the point where Kuroda was so upset that he decided to poison him.

TM noticed something strange on April 4, when he tried to take a sip from an already opened water bottle that had been sitting on his desk for a couple of days.

He immediately spat out the mouthful of water because it tasted funny, and a fellow lab worker confirmed that the bottle smelled off.

A couple of days later, TM sensed a strong smell coming from his lab shoes, so he contacted the police.

Samples from the water bottle and the shoes were analysed and came back positive for chloroform. The concentration was reportedly so high that the test strips could not provide an accurate result.

Strangely enough, Kuroda admitted to the poisoning attempt both to TM himself and to a professor from the university.

He added that he had become “upset with TM for not following the lab rule of wearing a lab coat and goggles,” for a promotion that the victim had gotten and for other things that had just “added up” over time. (Sunday Tribune)

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