A Brooklyn grandmother and her 4-year-old grandson were mysteriously poisoned within months of each other last year — and now the NYPD is probing who may be behind their deaths after exhuming the elderly woman’s body, police said Thursday.
Tofoon Man, 63, was rushed by her daughter to Mount Sinai Hospital after falling ill with stomach pains inside her Mapleton home on Feb. 17, 2021, according to cops and Man’s husband, Hing Sou Wong.
“All of the sudden, she got sick. I didn’t know what happened,” Wong told The Post through a Cantonese translator.
Her health quickly worsened and she was pronounced dead at the hospital the same day.
Three months later, on May 24, 2021, her grandson Wilhelm Ducatl, 4, called 911 with help from someone inside the same apartment to report an intense stomachache and fatigue and was rushed to Maimonides Hospital in critical condition, according to police and Wong. He died two days later.
The NYPD and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined the cause of the boy’s death was acute poisoning from thallium — an odorless metal found in foreign rat poisoning and insecticide that was once used by KGB killers during the Cold War.
They later exhumed the grandmother’s corpse for an autopsy and determined in early January the same substance had killed her, a police spokesman told The Post.
“Before this happened, she used to be really healthy. I’m heartbroken,” said Wong, who immigrated to the US from China with his wife in 1979.
Little Wilhelm had been living with his grandmother, a former garment worker, and his mom while his parents were separated, according to Wong.
A next door neighbor at the family’s Mapleton abode said, “I knew them …. I lived across the wall. I never heard any fighting.”
Police have interviewed the mother and not made any arrests in the case, nor have they identified a suspect. The father is not “not a suspect at this time,” according to the spokesman.
Thallium hasn’t been produced in the United States since 1984, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is imported for manufacturing electronics, imitation jewels, thermometers and optical lenses.
The chemical, which can enter the body by inhalation, ingestion and skin contact, has been banned for use as a rodenticide in the US.
Anyone with information on the case should call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers line 800-577-TIPS.
Additional reporting by Bill Farrington and Khristina Narizhnaya