Trainee chef says drain cleaner was poured into the soup by Maxwell Cook, who denies administering poison
A trainee chef has told of her shock at seeing a kitchen porter at a top public school allegedly try to poison a pot of carrot and coriander soup.
Louise Samples, 21, was so stunned to see Maxwell Cook pour a cleaning product into the soup at Stowe school that she did not at first tell anyone, a court heard.
Cook, 58, denies attempting to administer poison with intent to injure, aggrieve or annoy.
On the first day of his trial, Samples told Aylesbury crown court she had seen him in the kitchen pouring a product used to unblock drains into the soup pot.
She said: "I was extremely shocked at what I saw and I carried on walking. I didn't feel comfortable enough to approach him."
Cook's defence barrister, Henry James, asked Samples whether in fact it was she had who poisoned the soup to discredit the chef, with whom she was competing for a job.
But the trainee denied this, telling the court in a shaky voice: "Everyone I work with is like a second family to me."
The presence of the cleaning product in the soup on 11 March last year was detected during a routine tasting, the court heard, and no pupils or staff at the £27,000-a-year school in Buckinghamshire were hurt.
If ingested, the toxic liquid can cause irritation, vomiting and swelling of the throat.
