New York boy and grandmother both die months apart from thallium poisoning

‘All of a sudden, she got sick. I didn’t know what happened’

The pair died within months of each other. (Tafoon Man died of thallium poisoning.)

New York police are investigating the deaths of a four-year-old boy and his grandmother, who died months apart in what authorities believe is a poisoning case.

Tafoon Man, 63, died in February 2021, passing away the same day she was rushed to hospital with stomach pains.

Her grandson Wilhelm Ducatl, 4, died several months later in May, suffering from similar symptoms and dying several days after he was admitted to Maimonides Hospital in a critical condition.

The youngster was found to have died from acute thallium poisoning, prompting authorities to exhume his grandmother’s body to investigate whether thallium had acaused her death. An autopsy confirmed that Man had also been poisoned.

The pair had been living in the same Brooklyn apartment when they fell ill, as Man had moved in with her daughter and grandson following the breakdown of her daughter’s marriage.

Man’s husband Hing Sou Wong told The New York Post: “All of a sudden, she got sick. I didn’t know what happened”. He told The Daily Mail he didn’t discover the pair had been poisoned until police knocked on his door.

An unmaed relative of the pair told the Mail of the homicide investigation: “Almost a year after everything ... if the police are investigating, we just want them to do their work.”