Porter at top school denies poisoning charge

Louise Samples, 21, was so stunned to see Maxwell Cook pouring a cleaning product into the carrot and coriander 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.

But on the first day of his trial, his former colleague Miss Samples told Aylesbury Crown Court in Buckinghamshire she had seen him in the kitchen pouring into the pot a sanitising destainer used to unblock drains.

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 Miss 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 March 11 last year was detected during a routine tasting, the court heard, and no pupils or staff at the £27,000-a-year school were hurt.

If ingested, the toxic liquid can cause irritation, vomiting and swelling of the throat.

Cook, who appeared in a grey suit looking frail and elderly, sat with his hands clasped in front of him, listening intently as the prosecutor told the jury “quite a large number of people” would have been affected.

If the soup had been eaten, it would have had “detrimental effects”, Robert Spencer-Bernard said.

“The intended victims were staff and students who might drink some carrot soup, which the allegation is he had laced with a sanitising destainer,” he said.

Miss Samples, who had stayed behind after her shift ended to do some studying, spotted Cook pouring the liquid from a five-litre bottle labelled with the name of the product, the jury heard.

It was about 3.30pm, when most kitchen staff would have left the premises for the break between their early and late shifts, the court was told.

But the trainee only spoke up some time after her colleagues had returned to the kitchen and she overheard one of them remarking that the soup “didn’t taste right,” she said.

In a statement given after the incident, she said that it had slipped her mind, Mr James told the court.

Mr James questioned whether there was any rivalry between her and the cook who had made the soup – another trainee chef called Charlie Lambrianou.

When she denied this, he asked her: “So it wasn’t you pouring sanitiser into the soup to discredit him?”

She answered “no.” She also denied having any issues with Cook.

Head chef Douglas Dallaway said Cook, who had worked at the school for three years, denied the allegation when he told him he was suspending him immediately.

The trial continues.