A 53-year-old doctor who allegedly posed as a nurse to poison his mother’s partner with a fake COVID-19 vaccine will have to spend the next 31 years behind bars.
“It was a bold plan. “This was a plan to murder a man in plain sight, in front of his own mother, the man’s life partner,” prosecutor Peter Makepeace told the jury at the trial of Thomas Kwan , reported “The Guardian”.
Judge Justice Lambert of Newcastle Court pulled no punches on Wednesday in sentencing the doctor to 31 years and five months in prison for attempting to murder his mother’s partner, Patrick O’Hara, 72, in order to protect his inheritance, the court heard.
Doctor Thomas Kwan, 53, without his nurse costume used to inject poison into his mother’s partner, Patrick O’Hara, 72.
Screenshot taken from Facebook, Northumbria Police
The couple had shared their lives for around twenty years at the time of the attempted murder, according to the British media.
To do this, Thomas Kwan allegedly first falsified documents for the British National Health System (NHS) in order to be hired as a community nurse, before disguising himself to camouflage his appearance when his mother and her arrived. victim for their COVID-19 vaccines.
The accused had also used a false license plate and booked a hotel under a false name in order to cover his tracks, noted “The Guardian”.
As soon as the product, which the court considered to be iodomethane, a chemical used as a pesticide, was injected, the septuagenarian began to feel significant pain in his arm, before being reassured by the fake nurse telling him that this was common.
The poison reportedly caused a large, life-threatening infection with the flesh-eating bacteria called necrotizing fasciitis, which forced him to undergo a battery of procedures to remove large portions of his arm.
“If there had not been medical intervention, I am convinced that not only would I have lost my left arm, but also my life,” the victim told the court, thanking the police for their work , according to “The Guardian”.
However, the doctor was a “man of considerable means” with a “rich lifestyle”, who had just made an offer to purchase a house for two million pounds sterling, or more than $3.5 million, in the south of England, the prosecutor noted.
“It was not greed born from a lack of money, it was not greed born from necessity,” he insisted. It was greed born purely and simply from greed.”
Thomas Kwan, who initially denied the facts, admitted his guilt after just one day of evidence at his trial in court.
