WASHINGTON — When Charlie Rowley found a sealed box containing a bottle of perfume on the ground in the southern English town of Amesbury, he figured it would make a great gift for his girlfriend of two years, Dawn Sturgess. He gave it to her on June 30, never imagining the bottle was filled with a poisonous nerve agent called Novichok, a Russian-made chemical weapon.

Rowley spoke with Britain’s ITV television channel on Tuesday and described the ordeal. He said he found the small box still sealed and later got some liquid on his hands.

‘‘I washed it off and I didn’t think anything of it,’’ he said. ‘‘It all happened so quick.’’

Sturgess was not so lucky. Rowley said she sprayed some of the liquid on her wrists and died just over a week later.

That was roughly four months after the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were hospitalized due to Novichok exposure in Salisbury, 8 miles away.

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