Nurse Found Guilty of Murdering Patients in U.K.

A nurse working in a hospital in north England has been found guilty of murdering two patients and poisoning many others.

Victorino Chua, a 49-year-old father of two, was found guilty of killing 44-year-old Tracey Arden and 83-year-old Derek Weaver, both patients at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport, England, where Chua worked, by injecting insulin into saline bags, which were then inadvertently used by other nurses. The court heard that Chua also “changed tack” after police were alerted and began sabotaging prescription charts, increasing patients’ dosages. Chua was cleared in the death of a third patient, Arnold Lancaster.

The poisonings took place between June 2011 and January 2012, when Chua was first arrested, BBC reports. Chua was then rearrested in March 2014.

During the trial, the court was shown a letter found in Chua’s home in which the nurse wrote that he was “an angel turned into an evil person” and “there’s a devil in me.” Yet the prosecutor, Peter Wright QC, told the jury that the motive for the nurse’s actions was “impossible to fathom.” Chua now faces life in prison.