British police launched a murder investigation this week after an ex-Russian spy and his daughter were targeted with a nerve agent while out shopping in Salisbury, a city in southern England, reports USA Today. Britain’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd said that the police officer who first attended to Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia, 33, is conscious and talking despite falling ill after he found the pair lying unconscious on a bench near Salisbury’s Maltings shopping center. However, Rudd said the officer is still in serious condition. Meanwhile, the Skripals are in critical but stable condition in a coma in Salisbury hospital. Sergei Skripal is a former Russian double agent convicted of passing identities of Russian agents working undercover in Europe to MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, according to USA Today. He was jailed in Russia for treason in 2006 after he confessed to working for British M16. He was freed in 2010 as part of a U.S.-Russian spy swap and he moved to Britain. It is unclear why he would be a target or who might want him dead. Though some outspoken critics of Putin have been killed or died in mysterious ways, including journalists, opposition politicians and exiled tycoons, Skripal does not fit this profile. The Kremlin denies any accusation that they were involved. Skripal’s daughter was visiting him from Russia at the time of the attack. Counter-terrorism agents are trying to discover the source of the nerve agent that was used.
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