U.K. Police Declare ‘Major Incident’ Over ‘Unknown Substance’

(Bloomberg) -- Police in the English county of Wiltshire have declared a “major incident” after it’s suspected that two people may have been exposed to an unknown substance in the town of Amesbury.

Emergency services were called to an address in Muggleton Road, Amesbury, on the evening of June 30, according to a statement posted by Wiltshire Police on its website and Twitter feed today. A man and woman, both in their 40s, were found unconscious in a property, according to the statement.

“It was initially believed that the two patients fell ill after using possibly heroin or crack cocaine from a contaminated batch of drugs,” according to the police statement. “However, further testing is now ongoing to establish the substance which led to these patients becoming ill and we are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances surrounding this incident.”

A number of sites, believed to be places the individuals frequented in the period before they fell ill, will be cordoned off overnight in and around the Amesbury and Salisbury area as a precautionary measure.

Amesbury is a town close to the city of Salisbury, where a former Russian spy and his daughter earlier this year were victims of a nerve agent, sparking a diplomatic spat with Russia.

To contact the reporter on this story: Colin Keatinge in Tokyo at ckeatinge@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tal Barak Harif at tbarak@bloomberg.net, Colin Keatinge

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.