San Diego

Family of Local Woman Poisoned by Navy Husband Speaks to NBC's Dateline

In Thursday's Dateline, doctors explain the process that eventually led them to discover Uto had been eating a dangerous chemical that was once used as an assassination weapon against former spies

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NBC's Dateline

The family of a San Diego woman who was slowly fed a chemical once used in rat poison by her husband, then a Navy sailor, speaks out Thursday night on NBC's Dateline, as do the medical staff who worked to save her life.

Watch NBC's Dateline Thursdays at 10 p.m. on NBC 7 or NBC7.com

When 28-year-old Brigida Uto arrived at a San Diego Kaiser Permanente triage center in March 2018, she was close to death.

In the race to save the young mother's life, doctors began investigating a medical mystery.

"She was losing her vision. She couldn't feel her extremities -- her feet and her hands. She couldn't even see the water I was giving her," Laura Comstock a triage nurse at the hospital told NBC's Dateline investigator Natalie Morales.

In Thursday's Dateline, doctors explain the process that eventually led them to discover Uto had been eating a dangerous chemical that was once used as an assassination weapon against former spies and their attempts to treat her.

Meanwhile, the Federal Bureau of Investigations was investigating a potential crime.

As one doctor said, "I'm proceeding as if this is an intentional poisoning until proven otherwise."

Her family -- who now know how Uto's husband poisoned her for months by adding Thallium, considered a weapon of mass destruction by the U.S. government, to her food and drink -- also speaks out, on Dateline.

Watch the episode, "The Prussian Blue Mystery" on Thursday at 10 p.m. on NBC 7 or NBC7.com.

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