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Wang’s victim’s troubles started on the morning of Monday, Jan. 8, O’Brien recounted in court, when he decided to kick-start the workweek by snacking on an apple pie he’d purchased at Metro. Within two bites he realized the tart was too bitter to eat. The researcher contracted diarrhea that afternoon and vomited at 4 p.m. after resting his head on his desk and pondering that grim possibility for two hours.

Undeterred by what he thought was a routine case of food poisoning, O’Brien said the researcher ate another pie at the lab the following Monday and didn’t taste anything abnormal — until he arrived at the middle and encountered the same unpleasant flavour. That Friday, as he drove to visit his family in Mississauga, Ont., he discovered that the water bottle he had brought along for the ride smelled like chemicals.

The cycle repeated itself the week after with a slight twist: the cinnamon raisin bread he bought from Loblaws to eat on Monday now had a chemical aroma. So did his water on another trip to Mississauga on Friday. By the next Monday, three weeks removed from his pie-induced sickness, the researcher acted on a friend’s advice and quietly installed the camera at his desk, O’Brien said.

Kingston Police Det. Jim Veltman verified on Friday that Wang and the researcher were roommates for a time, though the two no longer lived together by the time Wang started contaminating the man’s food and water.

Veltman also confirmed that Wang worked as a food deliveryman between his original arrest in January and second arrest in April, but said police don’t think he tampered with any products he handled in that capacity because they’re confident he had “a very clear motive” to target the researcher. He declined to specify what the force believes that motive to be.