Stepping Hill hospital nurse poisoned patients with insulin, court hears
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Version 0 of 1. A hospital nurse murdered three patients and poisoned 18 others by contaminating saline bags and ampoules with insulin, a court has heard. Victorino Chua, 49, also deliberately altered the dosages on prescription charts while working as a staff nurse at Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport, Manchester crown court was told on Tuesday. In total, jurors were told, 21 patients suffered as a result, with three of them being murdered: Tracey Arden, 44, Arnold Lancaster, 71, and Derek Weaver, 83. Chua, a Filipino who came to the UK in 2002 and had worked at Stepping Hill since 2009, listened impassively in the dock as Peter Wright QC began outlining the prosecution case against him. Chua has pleaded not guilty to 36 charges, including three of murder, one of grievous bodily harm with intent, 23 of attempted grievous bodily harm, eight of attempting to cause a poison to be administered and one of administering a poison. All the offences are said to have happened between June 2011 and January 2012. Wright said that a major police investigation into the incidents revealed a “pattern” and helped to identify the alleged killer. He told the jury of 10 men and two women: “The pieces of the forensic jigsaw began to emerge. The person responsible for each of these matters became increasingly clear. It was, we say, Victorino Chua. “As the investigation intensified, the common denominator, the defendant, was shown in sharper and sharper relief. “Motive for this course of conduct, whomsoever is responsible, is difficult to determine with precision. “Only the person responsible could ever know why they would embark on such conduct.” Wright said it was the prosecution’s job to prove Chua was responsible, not to say exactly why, or “what caused him to turn from a man who had dedicated his life to caring for others, to harming them”. Chua had worked on two wards, A1 and A3, at the hospital, but it was a “lottery” as to which patients were harmed, because the saline bags and ampoules he contaminated with insulin were then used by other unsuspecting doctors and nurses on innocent patients, Wright said. “In the vast majority of cases, the poisoner seem to have contaminated products or altered prescription dosages completely at random. It was therefore a lottery as to who was treated with contaminated products and who was not.” The trial continues. |