Restaurant eaters suffer caustic schnapps shock

21/07/2005 - 13:20:07
Three elderly people were severely poisoned after they ordered a schnapps at a restaurant and the owner mistakenly served them caustic soda, police said today.

The victims, a 94-year-old woman and her children, aged 68 and 69, were poisoned at the Grenoble restaurant yesterday evening and remained hospitalised in critical condition, authorities said.

They said the poisoning, which police were treating as an accident, happened when the restaurant owner went into his cellar to refill an empty bottle and returned with toxic caustic soda instead of the local schnapps. Both liquids were the same colour, police said.

Officials said a similar mishap occurred about two weeks ago at a restaurant in Strasbourg.