Cancer researcher gets 10 years in poisoning case
A cancer researcher has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for poisoning a colleague, who was also her lover, with a chemical found in antifreeze.
Dr. Ana Maria Gonzalez-Angulo, 43, a breast cancer researcher at Houston’s Texas Medical Center, had been convicted Friday of aggravated assault in the poisoning of Dr. George Blumenschein, the Associated Press reports.
Prosecutors said Gonzalez-Angulo had spiked Blumenschein’s coffee with ethylene glycol after Blumenschein spurned her for another woman, his longtime live-in girlfriend, Evette Toney.
Blumenschein survived the poisoning, although he testified in court last week that he now has only 40 percent of his kidney function.
During closing arguments in the sentencing phase of her trial Monday, prosecutors asked jurors to sentence Gonzalez-Angulo to at least 30 years in prison because the poisoning had stolen years from Blumenschein’s life.
But defense lawyers hoped that her work as a cancer researcher would sway jurors to keep her out of prison, the AP reported. Derek Hollingsworth asked for probation, saying Gonzalez-Angulo should not be judged solely by one event in her life.
“It’s not the right result to send her to prison for a lengthy period of time … When you look at the entirety of her life, (probation) makes sense,” he said, according to KWTX. Several patients of Gonzalez-Angulo’s also testified on her behalf.
Blumenschein testified that he became sick Jan. 27, 2013, not long after he and Gonzalez-Angulo had been intimate, and that he immediately suspected she had spiked his coffee.
The defense argued that other people, including Toney, could have poisoned Blumenschein.
