In autumn, a nurse from the hospital on the right of the Isar in Munich was arrested.
He is said to have tried to kill three patients.
Now it comes out: There is even a suspicion of murder.
Munich - An arrest in Munich made headlines in autumn 2020.
A nurse is said to have tried to kill three patients in a hospital.
Now it turns out: It could be much worse.
Investigations against Munich nurses expanded: there is suspicion of murder
New investigation results suggest that the attempts at killing could only be the tip of the iceberg and that it did not stop at the attempted murder. The investigation into the man has expanded from attempted to committed murder. "The public prosecutor's office is now assuming not only three attempted, but also two completed homicides," as a spokeswoman for the authority said at the request of the German Press Agency in Munich. And, according to her, further suspected cases are still being examined: "The investigations are ongoing."
So far it was only known that the public prosecutor's office was investigating three cases on suspicion of attempted murder.
She accuses the 24-year-old at the time of arrest of having put three patients (54, 90, 91) in mortal danger with medication out of a pure addiction to their status, in order to then shine in their rescue.
An attentive chief physician at the Klinikum rechts der Isar was puzzled because the condition of two patients suddenly and inexplicably deteriorated.
Internal investigations then revealed evidence of a similar case in which the suspect was on duty.
Attempted murder of three patients in the Klinikum rechts der Isar: Munich nurses under suspicion
The suspicion: The nurse injected the patient with an overdose of a drug that should not be administered to them. * Traces of these non-prescribed drugs were found in the patients' blood. The clinic reported the nurse, he denied the allegations when he was arrested. The trained geriatric nurse had come to the clinic via a temporary employment agency since July 2020. He was mainly on duty in the so-called guard ward, an intermediate ward between intensive care and normal ward, where the sick were cared for around the clock. The police investigation team dealing with the case is therefore called the "guard station".
Before his job in the Munich clinic, the man from North Rhine-Westphalia had not worked in a clinic, but only in geriatric care facilities, according to the public prosecutor.
According to previous knowledge, he was not noticeable there.
"With regard to his work there, according to the investigative authorities there, there were no abnormalities with regard to any comparable cases," said the spokeswoman for the public prosecutor's office.
Klinikum rechts der Isar: Pfleger wanted to boast about resuscitation measures
According to the authority, chat history suggests that the young man wanted to boast about resuscitation measures in Munich - and about having saved human lives.
"So risking someone's life and then standing there as a white knight, of course, we classify that as low motivation," said the spokeswoman after the arrest.
At the time, she didn't want to say who the man was chatting with about the resuscitation.
Nor did she explain whether the suspect has since commented on the allegations.
Did he want to kill patients?
Munich nurses arrested
The case is reminiscent of the patient killer Niels Högel, who became known as the “death nurse” and who was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in 85 cases by the Oldenburg district court in 2019.
He worked as a nurse in intensive care medicine in clinics in Oldenburg and Delmenhorst.
According to a ruling by the regional court, he killed a total of 85 patients by giving them medication that was not medically indicated.
It is said that it was primarily a matter of being able to resuscitate the patient afterwards and to shine in front of colleagues.
Homicides in care - Klinikum rechts der Isar is not the first hospital to be affected
Homicides in the care sector keep making headlines across Germany. It was only at the beginning of October last year that the Munich District Court I sentenced an assistant nurse to life imprisonment with subsequent preventive detention for the murder of three patients. The man from Poland injected old people he was supposed to care for with insulin, which can be fatal if overdosed.
The Klinikum rechts der Isar is not the first Munich hospital to be affected by such a case. In 2016, the Munich Regional Court I sentenced a midwife from the Großhadern Clinic to 15 years in prison for sevenfold attempted murder in the delivery room. The court was convinced that the woman had secretly given blood thinners to patients when they gave birth to a caesarean section. Without emergency surgery, they would have died.
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List of rubric lists: © Paul Knecht / dpa / dpa-Bildfunk