DELTONA — A woman found out her ex-boyfriend tried to poison her when a family member drank from her bottle of vodka and tasted bleach, Florida authorities said.
Now, 23-year-old Edwin Guzman III is charged with poisoning food or water, according to the Volusia Sheriff’s Office.
Guzman and his girlfriend dated for two years and lived together before they broke up, and the woman moved out, deputies said in an arrest affidavit.
She went to his Deltona home on July 14 to pick up the rest of her things and found Guzman had left piles of her items in the living room and in the driveway, she told investigators.
She gathered her belongings, including a bottle of Tito’s vodka and skincare products, and took them to her uncle’s home, where he saw the Tito’s and suggested they take a shot, deputies said.
But when he sipped the vodka, he knew something was wrong.
“The minute I put it in my mouth, it just reeked of bleach,” the uncle told deputies, according to body-worn camera footage shared by the sheriff’s office. “Instantly I spit out, but thank God it was me and not her.”
They called 911, and a deputy who came to the home had her call Guzman and ask why there was bleach in the bottle of vodka, according to the affidavit.
During the phone conversation, Guzman told her he poured bleach in her vodka bottle, as well as in some of her facial products, deputies said.
Law enforcement said they arrested Guzman at his home.
Deltona is about a 30-mile drive northeast from Orlando.
By OLIVIA LLOYD/McClatchy News
Olivia Lloyd is a National Real-Time Reporter for McClatchy covering the Southeast. She is based in South Florida and graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Previously, she has worked for Hearst DevHub and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
