Hus Forbi seller tricked into drinking ammonia

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

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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