A 56-year-old man in Nagano Prefecture died earlier this week shortly after drinking a can of oolong tea at his home, it was learned Thursday.
The victim may have bought the canned drink at a supermarket in the same prefecture where a can of oolong tea was found laced with cyanide Tuesday, Nagano Prefectural Police officials said.
Ichijuro Nakazawa, a house painter in the town of Obuse, collapsed suddenly after drinking the canned tea after breakfast Monday, the officials said. He was rushed to a nearby hospital but died about two hours later, they said.
The cause of death was determined to be cardiac arrest, and doctors at the hospital saw no signs of poisoning. But Nakazawa's wife grew suspicious Thursday after learning about the poisoning case in the supermarket in the nearby city of Suzaka.
She checked the oolong tea can in question and found a hole in the bottom, which had been sealed with a transparent material. She then alerted the local police.
It was the same brand as the product found in the Suzaka supermarket, and police are now examining the can's contents.
In the Suzaka case, police discovered that the can found in the supermarket had been tampered with after the store's chief clerk reported that the tea tasted bad Tuesday night. An approximately 3.5-mm hole in the bottom was sealed with adhesive.