Toronto man pleads guilty to murder, admits poisoning toddler with sodium nitrite
Scarborough toddler mysteriously died and another toddler became seriously ill after eating cereal.Francis Ngugi, a friend of the mother of one of the children whose advances she had rejected, admitted in court that he purposefully poisoned the children and took full responsibility for what he called a “shameful and selfish act.”After Ngugi pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the Superior Court of Justice on Tuesday morning, the 47-year-old began to read a letter he had penned for the mother of Bernice Wamala, the mother of the deceased.As Ngugi began to apologize, the cries of Bernice’s mother drowned out his words, and she slumped over onto the floor.The distraught woman was consoled by crown prosecutors and victim-witness support workers. Ngugi’s letter was filed before he could finish reading it.According to an agreed statement of facts read out in court, Ngugi, a refugee claimant from Kenya who came to Canada in 2018, began working as a janitorial custodian at Griffith Foods, a processing plant in Scarborough.As part of its food processing work, Griffith Foods cures meat products and uses 99 per cent pure food-grade sodium nitrite chemicals to do so.
Sodium nitrite is toxic to humans. While it comes in several forms, the formula used by Griffith Foods is a colourless, odourless crystalline powder.In early 2019, Ngugi met Zahra Issa at an adult learning school.
They became close friends in the summer of 2020 and began a romantic relationship in September 2020.Issa came to Canada in 2018 and had a baby shortly thereafter, Samarah Sameer. At the time, Issa was still married to her husband, but he remained in Tanzania with the couple’s older daughter.Ngugi loved Issa and her daughter and often attended their
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