The following article by Ruby Mellen with the Washington Post was posted on the Star Tribune website July 27, 2018:
Russian-made Novichok found in bottle in England.
A specialist team member in a police protective suit leaves the front entrance of John Baker House for homeless people on Rollestone Street in Salisbury, England, Friday, July 6, 2018. British police are scouring sections of Salisbury and Amesbury in southwest England, searching for a container feared to be contaminated with traces of the deadly nerve agent Novichok.
When Charlie Rowley found a sealed box containing a bottle of perfume on the ground in the southern English town of Amesbury, he figured it would make a great gift for his girlfriend of two years, Dawn Sturgess.
He gave it to her on June 30, never imagining that the bottle was filled with a poisonous nerve agent called Novichok, a Russian-made chemical weapon the country reserves for some of its deadliest attacks.