BOGOTA (Reuter) - A crazed nursing student killed himself and four
classmates with poisoned sherry during a day trip to a town just north of Bogota Saturday, police said.
Four men and a woman were dead. At least six other people, all nursing
students, were in critical condition at the hospital in the town of Cajica,
a short drive outside the capital, regional police chief Col. Alonso Arango
said.
Police said one of the victims told them before dying that a male student
on the bus was passing out the wine and he was the apparent killer.
Toxicology checks showed the sherry had been laced with a lethal
insecticide commonly used to combat potato bugs, Arango said. He said no
motive for the murders had yet been established.
Police found a card in the clothes of one of the dead indicating he was a
member of a shadowy sect called the Order of Aquarius. Arango said it was
too early to say whether the bizarre killings were linked to the suspected
religious group, adding that he knew very little about them.
We found a membership card of a sect called the Order of Aquarius on one
of the bodies. We know very little about the group. It is too early to tell
if these deaths are related to a religious cult,'' Arango told Reuters.
The dead and injured were all part of a 200-strong group that set out from
Bogota in several buses to celebrate the graduation of 46 of the nursing
students. They had been going for a meal at the Indiana Jones restaurant between Cajica and the neighboring town of Chia.
