A British doctor has been sentenced to prison for over 31 years on Wednesday for plotting unsuccessfully to kill his mother’s partner with a fake COVID-19 vaccine. This diabolical plan had involved him falsifying medical documents and dressing in disguise to poison his victim.
The 53-yr-old Thomas Kwan, had passed himself off as a nurse, even going as far as taking his mother’s blood pressure before administering poison to her then partner Patrick O’Hara in Newcastle, northern England.
O’Hara had survived but ended up suffered from necrotising faciitis -a potentially fatal flesh-eating bacterial infection, after receiving the injection. He also underwent multiple operations.
Kwan, a family doctor in Sunderland, pleaded guilty to the attempted murder in October shortly after his trial began at Newcastle Crown Court. This was after he had previously admitted a charge of administering a noxious substance.
The presiding judge, Christina Lambert sentenced Kwan to 31 years and five months in prison for what she described as “an audacious plan to murder a man in plain sight”.
She further told Kwan that his plan involved him “abusing your knowledge of the healthcare system”, adding that his actions wrecked havoc on public confidence in the healthcare profession.
Shortly after arresting Kwan, police officials found a large number of castor beans and a recipe for manufacturing ricin (a biological toxin made from the beans) in his home.
Exposure to as little as a pinhead amount of ricin can lead to death.
A chemical expert had however, concluded O’Hara was not injected with ricin.
