The boy fell ill after the poisoned Sergei Skripal “gave him bread to feed the ducks”

Request they showed CCTV footage of Mr Skripal, who was infected with “Rookie” at the time, handing some bread to a boy wearing a cap and wellington boots.

The child, along with two others, were later located as part of the investigation and reported feeling unwell for a day or two after the interaction.

However, when they were eventually tested, all three showed no traces of chemical weapons.

“Chanting and using obscure words”

Bystander Alison McCourt, who was a chief nurse in the British Army at the time, told an inquest on Tuesday that she rushed to help Mr. Skripal and Yulia after her daughter raised the alarm.

Ms McCourt said she was only in the vicinity because her children wanted to eat at Nando’s, dismissing later conspiracy theories about her involvement.

As they walked through The Maltings shopping centre, Ms McCourt’s daughter reportedly alerted her to the pair, shouting: “That man looks like he’s had a stroke.”

The former head nurse of the army said that when she approached the bench, she was met by Mr. Skripal, making strange noises with his arms outstretched, while Yulia sat with her hands on the back of the seat.

In the read statement of the witness requestMs McCourt said Mr Skripal was “chanting” using “unintelligible words” and that she could not make out his accent. “It wasn’t clear, it wasn’t words. I don’t think that’s what anyone was trying to say,” she added.

“It was very strange, there was no way that two people would have an epileptic seizure at the same time and place,” she said, adding that they were both “well dressed” which “didn’t fit the stereotypes regarding drug users”. “.

The investigation also checks how Don SturgesThe 44-year-old died four months after the attack on the Skripals, having been left behind a discarded perfume bottle her boyfriend Charlie Rowley found her.

She turned blue around her lips

For the first time, the inquest heard details of how Ms McCourt and off-duty pediatric consultant Helen Ord began a desperate battle to save the lives of Mr Skripal and his daughter.

Detectives believe that the couple first came into contact with nerve agent “Novichok”. when it was smeared on the front door handle of their Salisbury home.

Ms McCourt and Dr Ord, who also happened to be in the area shopping with her partner, performed a series of emergency procedures to help the two of them.

Although Ms. McCourt tried help Mr. SkripalDr. Ord focused on Julia, whose condition at the time was much worse than her father’s.

She was fit, her airways were blocked, she was vomiting profusely, and her lips were blue.

Dr. Ord, who was a pediatric registrar at the time, told the researcher: “She was much worse off than he was.”

Making sure that passers-by called an ambulance, the off-duty consultant kept Yulia’s airway open by performing a “jaw thrust” so that the 33-year-old woman would not swallow her own tongue.

“There was a very limited number of things I could do to help,” said Dr. Ord, who had no special equipment on hand.

Lord Hughes of Ombersley, chairman of the inquiry, told her: “Everyone is lucky you answered.”

“I have never seen them in my life”

The investigation found that both Ms McCourt and her daughter suffered side effects as a result making contact with the Fiddlers, waking the next morning with red and swollen eyes and suffering from itchy joints. The couple’s blood tests were negative.

In a second witness statement, Ms McCourt denied the document was released Russian The embassy after the attack. It claimed it raised a number of “unanswered questions” and suggested that the British Army’s top nurse had died at the time of the Skripals’ collapse.

Ms McCourt, who retired from the army in 2022 after leading an Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone, told the inquest: “I didn’t know the people in the dock before. I had never seen them in my life and did not know who they were.

“Given my training, had I known that a nerve agent had been used, I would not have put myself at the potential risk of harm.”

She added: “My children chose this particular place for our trip: they wanted to go to Salisbury because Nando’s was there. I wanted to visit another town in the area and another restaurant, but I gave in to my kids and so we went to Salisbury.’

The Skripals eventually recovered after weeks of treatment, which also included consultations with experts from the nearby Porton Down Chemical Warfare Research Centre. They were given new identities and now live in an unknown country.