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When he ate it later, he decided it was inedible after two bites.

O’Brien told Justice Allan Letourneau that those two bites were enough to make the victim very ill, and he experienced diarrhea and vomiting.

He attributed his sickness to food contamination, and brought a second pie into the lab a week later, but detected the same bitter flavour. He detected the same taste in some raisin bread he ate Jan. 22. The bread was also also tasted by a lab colleague, who spit it out.

And it wasn’t just in the lab. O’Brien said he detected the same chemical smell in a water flask he took on trips Jan. 19 and Jan. 26.

He saved a sample of the water and on Jan. 29, another Monday, he took the advice of a friend and set up a hidden camera at his desk.

Court heard that the victim brought bread into the lab, leaving it in his backpack inside a desk drawer. He was called to a group meeting, which included Wang, but Wang left the room.

Less than an hour later, the victim received cellphone notification that his camera had captured video. It showed Wang at the victim’s desk, wearing gloves and using a pipette to dispense something in the area where the victim’s lunch was kept.

Court was told that when Wang was later interviewed by Kingston police and shown the video, he admitted dosing his colleague’s food but said he’d only done it once and that it was ethanol, a readily available solvent.

But the victim provided samples of the food and water and chemical analysis established that the water from the flask had been dosed with NDMA, while the food contained NDMA and ethanol and water from a plastic tube Wang used contained NDMA and diethyl ether, once used as an anesthetic, but primarily used now as a solvent.