In an interview with The Sun, Charlie Rowley, who was discharged from hospital last week, with medics concluding that he was no longer in critical condition, spoke about Dawn Sturgess, who died a week after allegedly being exposed to a nerve agent.
“It’s amazing that I’m alive. In a way I feel lucky I survived but I’ve also lost so much. I’m feeling very low about Dawn. I remember finding a cosmetic bottle which I had picked up and gave it to Dawn as a present. I feel very sad about what happened to her, it’s awful and shocking. I was still on medication when they told me she passed away. I don’t think I will ever be able to get over it,” he said.
His brother Matthew earlier claimed that his sibling had told him about finding “something that looked like a perfume bottle,” which broke in Charlie’s hands after Dawn spayed its content on herself.
“He told me that they found something that looked like a perfume bottle. Dawn sprayed what was inside it on both her wrists and rubbed them together, like you do when you’re trying perfume. Charlie said she then gave the bottle to him and somehow it splintered or broke in his hands. That’s how he must have got contaminated,” Matthew told The Sunday Telegraph.
On June 30, Rowley and Sturgess were hospitalized after being found unconscious at their home in Amesbury, located several miles away from Salisbury where ex-GRU colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter collapsed in March. A week later, Sturgess died in the hospital, while Rowley‘s condition improved and he was released on July 20.