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Prezzo vows legal action against 'poisoning' couple if incident is proved to be a hoax

A major incident was declared at the Salisbury Prezzo - PA
A major incident was declared at the Salisbury Prezzo - PA

A restaurant chain is considering suing a Russian model and her hoaxer husband over their claims they were poisoned during a meal in Salisbury six months after a nerve agent attack in the city.

Sources at Prezzo, the Italian high street chain, said yesterday that legal action was a possibility depending on the outcome of an ongoing police inquiry into the incident. 

On Sunday evening, Anna Shapiro and her husband Alex King dined at the branch on Salisbury’s High street, but both fell ill and collapsed in the bathrooms. 

Ms Shapiro said her husband was frothing at the mouth and the pair were rushed to hospital where King was put into an induced coma 

His wife told a tabloid newspaper that she had “been targeted by Putin’s henchmen.”

Alex King and his wife Anna Shapiro in an Instagram photo
Alex King and his wife Anna Shapiro in an Instagram photo

The restaurant was closed for three and a half days as a precaution, costing the business thousands of pounds. 

However, doubt has been cast on the authenticity of the account provided by Ms Shapiro to The Sun after the pair were deemed medically fit by doctors and Wiltshire police said the illness was “not being treated as suspicious.”

One police source told the Telegraph: “The only thing we can say is the majority of the newspaper’s report can be ignored.”

The article, which ran on the front page and as a double page spread has now disappeared from the newspaper’s website for unspecified “legal reasons”

Mr King is known prankster who once duped the Prince of Wales into believing he was a member of the cast of The History Boys, and shook his hand at the film’s premiere.

A source at Prezzo said: “We wouldn’t rule out legal action. We don’t know all the facts at this stage but it looks like it could be a hoax.”

It also emerged yesterday that King is a convicted sex offender, who pleaded guilty to three counts of distributing indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children in 2004. He was given a non-custodial sentence and placed on the sex offenders register for five years.

Ambulances outside Prezzo in Salisbury - Credit: Matt Cardy/Getty Images
Ambulances and police rushed tot he restaurant in Salisbury on Sunday night Credit: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Yesterday morning, police visited the couple’s west London apartment and spent about an hour in the building, according to the concierge. King and Shapiro haven’t been seen in public since the incident, however a Wiltshire police spokesperson said: “We can confirm that both people have been interviewed and our inquiries are ongoing."

Speaking on Wednesday, Lorna Wilkinson, director of nursing at Salisbury District Hospital, said "given recent events" they had tested the couple for possible nerve agents on Sunday night.

"Tests on both patients came back negative. Both patients are now medically fit and there is no need for them to be in hospital," she said.

Earlier this week a Prezzo spokesperson said the police "made no suggestion that the illness was a result of anything present in our restaurant,” which reopened yesterday afternoon.