A RETIRED officer administrator from Wootton has revealed how he was at the centre of a major alert amid fears that an envelope he received contained potentially deadly anthrax.
Emergency services dashed to the home of Roy Richards, 68, at Downsview Gardens after he made an emergency call to Hampshire police stating he had received an envelope containing a suspicious white powder.
Officers cordoned off the two-bedroom semi-detached house in Wootton for over three hours on Wednesday. A fire fighter wearing a chemical protective gas tight suit removed the suspicious envelope from the kitchen of the house.
Speaking exclusively to The Gazette pensioner and keen historian Roy explained that he had collected the post and gone into the kitchen to open it.
“One of the letters was a brown envelope, it was very light and it had a weird looking 97 pence stamp on it. The address label was typed on a piece of paper and stuck to the front, not like a normal letter. I didn’t really pay that much attention to it” explained Roy.
“As I opened the letter with a knife, white powder started to spill on to the floor. I had visions of the IRA as the address on the front had my name on it, but it didn’t say the Isle of Wight, it said Northern Ireland.
“I read a little bit of the letter and it said ‘Put this into water and a 100 dollar bill will appear.’ It had a telephone number on the bottom to contact. When I saw the powder I was worried about what it might be. I think it’s some sort of Nigerian money scam. It was all very worrying.”
Roy continued: “I called the police and they phoned me back to explain that they were sending over a team of officers to look at the powder. They told me not to touch it, but to leave it where it was.
“The phone operator told me to go around the house making sure all the windows and doors were closed. Five police officers turned up and they told me to turn off the water supply and said not to go back into the kitchen.
“They explained that they had called in a specialist chemical officer from the fire service.
“One of the police officers said they had set up an area near the community centre for police, fire, ambulance and a chemical incident unit.
“When the fire fighter turned up in the chemical suit at the front door I started to worry about how dangerous the powder really could be. The fireman removed the envelope and put it into a plastic jar.
“The policeman told me I had to go upstairs have a shower and to bag up the clothes that I had been wearing. I spent three hours confined to my front room, spending most of the time reading and watching the television.
“The paramedics arrived after the fire fighter left, to check me over, they gave me a clean bill of health. “The response by the emergency services was very good, especially the way that they treated the incident and me.”
A spokesman for Hampshire and IW said “Emergency procedures were activated, but tests proved that the powder was harmless. Investigations are currently ongoing into the origin of the letter. We are currently working with the fire service to establish the origin of the letter and precisely what the substance is.”
