A former Lehigh University chemistry student won’t be setting foot inside a laboratory anytime soon after receiving a minimum seven-year jail sentence for poisoning his roommate with thallium. After Yukai Yang admitted to poisoning his roommate Juwan Royal with the highly toxic metal, he was convicted of attempted murder, according to an article from Chemistry World.
According to the article, Yang previously confessed to buying the odorless and tasteless element online and mixing it into Royal’s food in 2018. Katharine Kurnas, assistant district attorney in Pennsylvania’s Northampton County District Attorney’s Office, reportedly said the poisoning caused “diarrhea, vomiting, skin lesions, syncope, dizziness and, most severely, neurological effects in the nature of bilateral polyneuropathy.” Yang was ordered to be incarcerated for seven to 20 years. According to Chemistry World, Zijie Wang, a former doctoral candidate in chemistry at Queen’s University in Canada, also received a seven year jail sentence in 2018 after admitting to poisoning his colleague with the carcinogen N-nitrosodimethylamine.
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