'I was holding a baby when warned I could spread deadly nerve agent'

A police officer who responded to the Salisbury nerve agent attack was holding her baby niece when colleagues revealed she could contaminate others. PC Alexandra Way and a colleague were the first officers called out to former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia after they were found collapsed in the Wiltshire town. PC Way and PC Alex Collins first treated it as a routine call as the two people slumped on a bench appeared to have suffered drug overdoses. Only later did it emerge that Mr Skripal, 66, and Yulia, 33, had been poisoned with the deadly nerve agent novichok that remained on their bodies and could be fatal to others. PC Way has told a Channel 4 documentary, Salisbury Poisonings: The Untold Story, to be aired next week that she found the pair in the centre of the town. She said: "I noticed a man in his 60s on a bench, he was sat upright and he was rigid. His pupils were tiny, like pinpricks. I was thinking what's happened, who are these people?" The officer said she found his driving licence and saw his name was Sergei Skripal. She continued: "But at the time I had absolutely no idea about who he really was or what that meant." She later finished her shift and drove to see her sister in a neighbouring county who had just had a baby. PC Way said: "Her daughter was only two months old, she was tiny. I was holding the baby when I got a call saying come back in, bring all your kit, everything that you've touched and I thought there's a contamination issue and I'm holding a two month old baby. My heart dropped and I felt sick, panic set in." It had emerged that Skripal was jailed in Russia in 2006 for 15 years for passing information to MI6. He was released in 2010 under a spy swap and came to the UK, where he lived in Salisbury. He and his daughter were rushed to hospital in March 2018 after the doorknob of their home was coated in novichok. Both survived. Dr Steve Cockcroft, was the ICU consultant who treated the Skripals in the first 24 hours after they arrived at Salisbury Hospital on March 4, 2018. His initial working diagnosis was that the pair had suffered a drug overdose and he was especially concerned for Yulia. He said: "Something had happened to them and we just didn't know but I thought if she continues to deteriorate she's going to die in the next few hours. "But then one of the police constables who had come in with the ambulance Googled Sergei Skripal and that's when all the alarm bells started to go off…That's when I realised that actually there might be far more to this than met the eye." A global warrant is out for the arrests of three Russian agents - Alexander Petrov, Ruslan Boshirov, caught on CCTV, and Sergey Fedotov - but Russia will not extradite them. Mum-of-three Dawn Sturgess, 44, was killed by novichok in a perfume bottle that had been dumped by the spies who attacked former double agent Skripal. Her partner Charlie Rowley found the Premier Jour bottle in a charity bin in June 2018 and gave it to Dawn as a gift. Former Counter Terrorism Police chief Neil Basu has claimed that a senior civil servant responded to Dawn's death by saying: "Thank god it's a drug addict". Mr Basu said: "I remember looking at the DG of MI5 and both of us thought that's the worst thing we've ever heard in our careers. She's a mother, a beloved mother and a beloved daughter and she didn't deserve that and I was utterly disgusted by that." Salisbury Poisonings: The Untold Story - Wednesday April 29, 9pm Channel 4