HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016 07-20 Friends found dead at Maplewood motel had suicide pact, police suspect PIONEER PRESS7/21/2016
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Maplewood motel deaths were suicide, police say
Friends found dead at Maplewood motel had suicide pact,
police suspect
By JIIAIIIIIAIIif, ID11::11Adll'ir, I jdelage@pioneerpress.com
PUBLISHED: July 20, 2016 at 9:26 pm I UPDATED: July 21, 2016 at 10:23 am
A man and a woman found dead last month at the Northernaire Motel in Maplewood died of cyanide poisoning, according to the Ramsey County medical examiner's office.
Indications are that Zoua Vang, 27, of Osseo, Wis., and Tou Chang Xiong, 24, of La Crosse, Wis., planned a mutual suicide, said Maplewood Police Chief Paul Schnell.
The two, who were described as friends, checked into the motel at 2441 W. Maplewood Drive on May 31. A Northernaire employee found them unresponsive the next
afternoon. They were pronounced dead at the scene.
Schnell said evidence led investigators to believe Vang and Xiong had made a suicide pact. He said investigation into the source of the cyanide continues.
Tags: Maplewood
Jaime Del -age did Peace Corps stints in Botswana and Namibia and then slipped intojournalism by doing (free) freelance work for his hometown paper, the
Crookston Daily Times, in 1993. Since then he has worked for the Northern Light in Williams, Minn., the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald (part of the staff that earned
a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Flood of 1997) and the Duluth News Tribune. Hejoined the Pioneer Press in 2013.
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