Update 2: From the Wall Street Journal:
At a police conference Thursday night, police Capt. Joseph Lombardo said the man who brought the substance to the hotel manager had told police he found it in a suite and it didn’t belong to him.
Update: Homeland Security and the National Guard are getting involved, but they say terrorism isn’t suspected. Hmmm…
Not much is known yet, but I’ll update this as more is known. Cripes, this is only a few miles from where I live!
Ricin is a deadly toxin that has been used by the terrorists around the world.
Ricin Possibly Found at Las Vegas Motel
Preliminary tests indicate that a package found at a motel contained the toxin ricin, and seven people have been taken to hospitals, authorities said.
Police were called to the Extended Stay America Motel on Thursday and retrieved a package from the motel manager that was determined to be a chemical or controlled substance, Officer Ramone Denby said.
Two preliminary tests indicate it contained ricin, he said. Results from further tests by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a second local lab are expected Friday, police said.
“Ricin has no medical uses other than cancer research,” police Captain Joseph Lombardo said at a news conference Thursday night. “An individual citizen other than being involved in cancer research or cancer prevention would not have any legal means or proper means of having that.”
Investigators did not immediately believe the substance was intended for an attack. “This is not a terror incident at this point,” Lombardo said.
[…]
It takes between six and eight hours for someone exposed to ricin to show signs of contamination, Denby said.Homeland Security officials joined local police in the investigation. Officials from the FBI, Las Vegas Health District, a hazardous materials team and the National Guard were also at the scene.
They’re doing DoD research on ricin in the building next door to mine at my university…
I live in San Diego and there are castor bean plants all over the place here. Never looked for them in Las Vegas but I am guessing that they would grow just fine there if they were watered enough. They look like huge weeds and no one pays them any attention. I don’t think it would be very difficult for anyone – even a couple of high school kids with info off the net – to do some brewing to make up a batch of ricin.
This story, if true, is no reason to immediately jump to the conclusion of terrorism. Ricin has never been successfully utilized in a terrorist attack and is more common in attempted murder. I am hopeful this is a false alarm similar to the incident at UT a couple of years ago.
Although Ricin has never sucessfully been used in a terrorist attack, it still is plenty bad enough to be taken seriously. There are a bunch of organic compounds that may initially appear to be Ricin, so let’s hope for the best. But taking into consideration 4 people have gone to the hospital…
It’s frightening to contemplate someone spraying a little of this stuff over a morning buffet at a major casino.
@#3 attempted murder? The Ruskies offed a Bulgarian in london when I was there in the 70’s (stuck in the backside with a brolly + poisoned sphere). 3 days later he was dead. as the London times reported back then, he was stuck between the upper thigh and lower back (too proper to write bottom!).
what happened with the investigation on those bio-weapon letters that were sent around for a while years ago? Quietly trickled down? Any chance that there are forces who try to keep the American people in a state of fear, especially with elections coming up?
pj
“Often Used By Terrorists”
hardly used by terrorists more like.
More often used or posessed by various domestic US malcontents.
Your headline is scaremongering in itself.
Damn castor beans!
I think soon it would be time to bring back the terror alert color code system. Remarkably, it comes around every four years. Weird
#9, Dallas, right, another one of those “keep them on their toes” devices.
Soon you’ll have the writing on the wall again:
“Don’t be afraid! Be terrorized! Elect the Saviour!”
Please, American people, that last verb here is a typo, it should read “eject” !
pj
Interesting, go to the link to Wikipedia and read about “ricin”. There is a scary photograph of beans. Hello? Beans? What are the terrorists going to make killer beanie babies with “ricin” and shoot them down my throat? Sorry, I’m not scared yet. Castor beans? Castor oil? Wait a darn tootin minute, I was told to drink a whole tablespoon of castor bean “ricin” oil for “my health” EVERY DAY!!!!! There isn’t a trace of this “killer poison” in the oil? Speaking of oil, the Wiki mentions there’s a snake oil vaccine for that. Aaaahhhh yes, of course, there’s a vaccine for everything, until the strain changes, and then there’s a new vaccine, and then another, and then another, and then one that has 7 million strains all in one. Hello? Is anyone studying and listening? Alas, no one was there but it did become quite clear that my own study and reading between the head lines provided me ample protection from the word “ricin” and I was able to continue working at the bean plant processing erroneous databases of information as I always do, watching terrorist theats go by.
I checked out the LVRJ website, and found out that I stayed in that hotel years ago while house hunting in LV. This was a couple months before 9/11 happened. I hope the people taken to the hospital are OK.
#9, Bring it back? It never went away.
Mexico to Las Vegas: 300 miles, a very long distance – nothing to worry about.
Standard Fence: don’t need it because Mexicans have ladders – nothing to worry about.
Virtual Fence: failed, back to drawing board for 3 years, maybe sooner – nothing to worry about.
Racist Mexican gangs M-13 take over L.A. as cops are overwhelmed – nothing to worry about.
20 million illegal aliens: they only pick lettuce and clean hotel rooms, certainly not a terrorist problem – nothing to worry about.
Police, FBI, Haz Mat, Nat’l Guard and Homeland Security investigate the discovery of the 100% pure deadly poison ricin in a Las Vegas hotel?
Yup, move on, nothing to worry about.
Can you eat ricin ?
#15: Yes, but then you would die. A pin head-sized amount will kill a human.
Castor bean plants grow everywhere in Florida.
If the Castor plant is outlawed then only outlaws will have it!
Update:
Police say a man is in critical condition (coma) after the deadly toxin ricin was found in his Las Vegas motel room.
Las Vegas police Lt. Lewis Roberts says the man has been in a coma since he was found in his room at the Extended Stay America Motel on Thursday.
He’s one of seven people hospitalized after the ricin was discovered.
Ricin is made from processing castor beans, and can be extremely lethal.
Interesting that this would occur at the moment the President is urging renewal of all provisions of the Patriot Act that expand the government’s ability to conduct secret surveillance and use other law enforcement powers — which will expire at the end of the year unless Congress extends them.
How very coincidental. Why, it almost serves to underline his case. How very timely.
LAS VEGAS – As police tried to piece together how a rare, deadly poison ended up in a motel, the 57-year-old man who could hold the key lay unconscious in a hospital.
Adding to the mystery, police said firearms and an “anarchist type textbook” were found in the same room where the ricin was discovered two days later.
Yes, very timely and what a coincidence! President Bush must have planted the poison. Where was he during the past couple weeks?
Africa. Oh, never mind….
Well, it could have been Cheney then! Yah, that’s the ticket. The VP is behind this.
Its not terrorism because according to the Bushies, Christians can’t be terrorists. In this country there is an automatic exclusion, even though most of the 200+ domestic acts of terrorism committed in the USA are done by Christian extremists and separatists.
Nope, no terrorists, here move along.