Nine police officers taken to hospital for 'decontamination' after mysterious Holylands incident
Nine police officers were taken to hospital to be "decontaminated" following an incident at a property in south Belfast earlier this week, a senior officer has confirmed today.
Assistant Chief Constable Davy Beck told the Policing Board that an investigation is under way into substances that were found in the house in Damascus Street, in the Holylands district of the city.
Police had been withholding details of the incident, including how many officers were taken to hospital, and had refused to answer questions which the News Letter had put to it about the major incident.
Over a dozen emergency vehicles from the police, fire brigade, and Ambulance Service had descended on the tightly-packed neighbourhood after 5pm on Tuesday.
The PSNI said it was in response to people falling “unwell”.
They had said that four people went to hospital, as did an unspecified number of police due to “potential contact with a possibly noxious substance in the property”.
The following day it said that no “noxious substance” had been found.
It did say that suspected drugs (of a kind not specified) were found, but did not say if anyone had been arrested.
The incident was raised during Thursday's meeting of the Policing Board, where chairman Mukesh Sharma said it "seemed to be shrouded in mystery".
Mr Beck said: "We got a call after 5pm on the evening of the incident to indicate that Ambulance Service were calling out to a number of people unwell in a house.
"As a result of that four people were eventually taken to hospital in a number of conditions, unresponsive, some required CPR.
"There was quite a significant incident in terms of our response to that, the Ambulance Service response and the ED response to those four people.
"As that was ongoing some of our people felt symptoms of feeling unwell.
"We immediately declared that as a major incident.
"Nine of our officers were taken to hospital suffering with respiratory concerns."
Mr Beck said the nine officers were "decontaminated" at the Ulster Hospital.
He also said police had put in place protocols around a potential noxious substance incident.
He added: "It did require us to have an exclusion zone.
"Fire Service responded with their specialist equipment and confirmed there were no detections in terms of any noxious equipment.
"After a period of time there was an investigative search of the house.
"What I can say is the four people from the property have recovered well and there is nothing life-threatening in terms of that.
"All the officers that were impacted were decontaminated successfully, were under observation for a number of hours and all were released by midnight.
"We will take forward an investigation into some substances that were located in the house."
It remains unclear what caused the people to initially fall “unwell”, since no noxious substances were found.