‘Needle spiking’ fears rise in Europe, but crime ‘really difficult’ to trace

She had eagerly looked forward to going home for the holidays and reuniting with friends over dinner and drinks. Instead, Eva Keeling, 19, says, she wound up injected by a stranger with a needle, leaving her unable to speak or function while at a bar in her hometown of Stafford, in northern England.
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“We went outside [the bar] for some fresh air … then I ended up losing all control of my body, the ability to walk, hold my head up, I couldn’t talk — I was projectile vomiting everywhere,” Keeling told The Washington Post.

Days after her April night out, she still felt ill and, while getting dressed, noticed her arm was swollen. Feeling “petrified,” she rushed to a hospital for blood tests and was screened for diseases such as HIV. Doctors informed her she’d been injected with a “dirty needle,” causing the infection and swelling.

Keeling is one of hundreds of people across Britain and Europe who have been victims of suspected “needle spiking” — an injection administered without consent or knowledge, often in a bar or nightclub setting, in an attack similar to the more common crime of contaminating alcoholic drinks.

Authorities are grappling with how to prove and combat this kind of hard-to-trace attack and are seeking to raise awareness about the small but growing number of reported cases.

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