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Hus Forbi seller tricked into drinking ammonia

TheCopenhagenPost
July 23rd, 2015


This article is more than 9 years old.

‘Friendly drink’ nearly kills man peddling well-known homeless support newspaper

A homeless man was poisoned by an unknown assailant at Amagerbro Metro Station (Photo: Stig Nygaard )

Werner Sørensen, a 53-year-old homeless man, sat on a bench having  a beer at Amagerbro Metro Station in Copenhagen last April, a seemingly friendly stranger came by with a half-bottle of what he said was vodka and offered Sørensen, who peddles the popular homeless support newspaper Hus Forbi, a drink.

Sørensen said yes and took a drink, only to wake up three days later in the intensive care unit at Rigshospitalet. The bottle contained not vodka, but ammonia, and the homeless man had to be placed in an induced coma to protect his throat.

“It makes no sense,” Sørensen told Jyllands-Posten. “We sat and drank a beer before I opened up the bottle. The man must be a sadist. Normal people do not act this way.”

A deliberate act
One of Sorensen’s friends called the police and convinced him of the importance of that reporting the incident.

“It’s scary to think that Sørensen could have died if there had not been someone around who responded so quickly,” acting police commissioner at the Amager station, Jesper Cederholm, told Jyllands-Posten.

Police are working on the assumption that the poisoning was work is a deliberate act.

READ MORE: Three teenagers attack a homeless man in Copenhagen

The man is described as being about 30-years-old, with dark hair in a ponytail and walking a small red dog on a leash.


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A survey carried out by Megafon for TV2 has found that 71 percent of parents have handed over children to daycare in spite of them being sick.

Moreover, 21 percent of those surveyed admitted to medicating their kids with paracetamol, such as Panodil, before sending them to school.

The FOLA parents’ organisation is shocked by the findings.

“I think it is absolutely crazy. It simply cannot be that a child goes to school sick and plays with lots of other children. Then we are faced with the fact that they will infect the whole institution,” said FOLA chair Signe Nielsen.

Pill pushers
At the Børnehuset daycare institution in Silkeborg a meeting was called where parents were implored not to bring their sick children to school.

At Børnehuset there are fears that parents prefer to pack their kids off with a pill without informing teachers.

“We occasionally have children who that they have had a pill for breakfast,” said headteacher Susanne Bødker. “You might think that it is a Panodil more than a vitamin pill, if it is a child who has just been sick, for example.”

Parents sick and tired
Parents, when confronted, often cite pressure at work as a reason for not being able to stay at home with their children.

Many declare that they simply cannot take another day off, as they are afraid of being fired.

Allan Randrup Thomsen, a professor of virology at KU, has heavily criticised the parents’ actions, describing the current situation as a “vicious circle”.

“It promotes the spread of viruses, and it adds momentum to a cycle where parents are pressured by high levels of sick-leave. If they then choose to send the children to daycare while they are still recovering, they keep the epidemic going in daycares, and this in turn puts a greater burden on the parents.”