Some of us were probably put off from buying coffee after news that a woman, 27-year-old Wayan Mirna L Salimin, supposedly died after drinking Vietnamese coffee at a café in Grand Indonesia last week.
But Mirna’s death may have been due to more than a freak accident or coincidence, as the police found cyanide in one of the six beverage samples they obtained from the café where Mirna drank her last cup of coffee.
“We suspect that one of the samples, which the victim drank, contained a substance we suspect to be cyanide,” said Grand Commissioner Krishna Murti, director of the Public Crimes Investigation Unit at the Jakarta Metro Police, as quoted by Tempo yesterday.
Krishna added that the café owner drank a drop of the sample and felt queasy and vomited 30 minutes later.
It’s not clear if the cyanide in the sample was deliberately put in the coffee or if it was somehow created as a result of an unanticipated chemical reaction.
The Jakarta Police are going to compare their findings with the National Police’s autopsy results on Mirna before making the final determination on her cause of death.
That said, they’re already becoming suspicious about the possibility that Mirna’s death was a homicide.
The police say that on the day of her death, two of Mirna’s friends arrived at the café before her and so ordered her drink for her. One of her friends reportedly refused to go to the police for questioning as a witness last night. The police are going to summon them for questioning again today.
