Mounties raid flat over ricin-laced letter to White House
A group of police investigators walk out of condo building related to an investigation into the ricin-filled envelope sent to the White House, as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police checks the area in Longueuil, Quebec, Canada on Monday.
Canadian police on Monday searched an apartment in a Montreal suburb linked to the woman arrested for sending a ricin-filled envelope to the White House and to five other addresses in Texas, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.
US authorities arrested a woman at the US-Canada border near Buffalo, New York, on Sunday on suspicion that she sent the deadly poison by mail, addressed to the White House. The woman has joint Canadian and French citizenship, two sources said on Monday.
She was to appear yesterday at 4pm in Buffalo before Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder, Jr, a spokeswoman for the federal court in the Western District of New York said.
“We believe a total of six letters were sent, one to the White House and five to Texas,” RCMP officer Charles Poirier said outside the building where the search was taking place. “We can’t confirm that she lived in (the apartment), but it is connected to her.”
Poirier could not say where in Texas the envelopes were mailed, but the police department in Mission, Texas, received a suspicious letter within the last week, Art Flores, a spokesman for the department, said.
The department did not open the envelope and turned it over to the FBI, he said.
Flores also said the Mission police had arrested the woman now believed to be held in Buffalo in early 2019, but said he did not have records related to the arrest and referred further inquiries to the FBI.
The FBI is investigating several suspected ricin letters sent to law enforcement and detention facilities in South Texas, a US law enforcement source said.
So far they have not found any link to political or terrorist groups.
