A nurse from South Carolina has been sentenced Thursday to 25 years in jail for killing her husband by poisoning him with medical eye drops.
Lana Sue Clayton, 53, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and malicious handling of pharmaceutical products after administering contaminated drops of the Visine brand to her spouse.
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The woman admitted the crime after Steven Clayton, 64, fell down the stairs of the couple's house in Lake Wylie, valued at more than a million dollars, and died on July 21, 2018. Man, a successful businessman, had retired at age 40.
The autopsy revealed poisonous levels of tetrahydrozoline, a decongestant used to relieve redness in the eyes, said the York County Sheriff's Office. Clayton was arrested the following month.
"You let him suffer for three days," judge Paul M. Burch accused the accused. The poisoning occurred from July 19 to 21, the sheriff's office said.
Lana Clayton said she did not intend to kill her husband but only to make him sick, local channel WCNC reported.
"After discovering that Visine was the cause of death, I tried to take my life too," he said in court, "I couldn't live with the idea that I did something so terrible."
Prosecutor Kevin Brackett told the judge that Lana Clayton had killed her husband for money. He said he burned his will and threw his phone into a lake so he couldn't ask for help.
Alleged prior attempted homicide
Two years before the poisoning, Clayton shot her husband in the back of the head with a crossbow. At that time he told the police that it was an accident. He later changed his version of the story, claiming that the couple had an argument and that the man threw something at her, and she fired the crossbow while fleeing.
Lana Clayton's lawyers said her client was a good person who had worked as a Veterans Affairs nurse in Charlotte and had been a victim of sexual abuse in her past and that Steven Clayton "hit her, kicked her and strangled her" during her five year marriage.
"I wanted him to leave me alone," the woman told the judge.
If tetrahydrozoline is taken by mouth, cause nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, headache or more severe symptoms such as seizures or coma, according to the National Institutes of Health.
The use of Visine to affect a person was popularized in a scene from the comedy Wedding Crashers (2005).
In December, a man from North Carolina was accused of poisoning his wife with eye drops to collect two life insurance.
(Edited by Ivette Leyva)