Hydrogen Cyanide Found In UNL Dorm Room
February 2, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
One floor of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Pound Hall was evacuated and the rest of the dorm put on lockdown for an hour and a half Sunday evening after police discovered potentially lethal hydrogen cyanide in a student’s room.
Just after 6 p.m., UNL police responded to a 911 call alerting them of a possible overdose poisoning, according to Capt. Carl Oestmann.
The call came from a 19-year-old UNL student living on the second floor of Pound Hall who had ingested a small amount of the chemical. Oestmann wouldn’t say exactly how much the student ingested or in what form, whether gas or liquid.
Within minutes of the 911 call, UNL police and the Lincoln Fire Department, including the department’s hazardous materials unit, were on the scene. Officers evacuated Pound’s second floor and put the rest of the dorm on lockdown, not wanting any student coming or going during a potentially dangerous situation, Oestmann said.
