Six people, including a woman from California, died under mysterious circumstances Monday in what appears to be a mass cyanide poisoning in a Thai hotel, according to reports.
Two of the dead were Americans, including an Oakland resident, while the four others were Vietnamese, police officials in Bangkok said, according to the Washington Post.
The group was found dead in Room 502 of the Grand Hyatt Erawan, where a full meal was laid out untouched on the table and police found empty cups with traces of cyanide in them, according to the reports.
Only the Oakland woman, Sherine Chong, was in the room that day when hotel workers delivered tea and food to the room around 2 p.m. on Monday, police said. The five others entered the room after.
A housekeeper later found the bodies after they failed to check out on Tuesday. Two of the bodies were in a bedroom while the four others were in a living room, according to police.
In one photo of the scene that shows food on the hotel room table, one of the victim’s legs are visible on the ground.
The head of the forensic medicine department at Chulalongkorn University’s medical school said that there was cyanide in the blood of all six, according to the Associated Press.
A husband and wife who were among the deceased had invested more than $250,000 with two of the others, which police are looking into as a possible motive for the killings, according to Noppasin Punsawat, Bangkok’s deputy police chief.