TOKYO - A nurse at a Japanese hospital, unhappy because his girlfriend had left him, murdered at least 10 people and injured 10 more by pouring a deadly drug into their intravenous drips, say police.
Reports in the Japanese media say that 29-year-old Daisuke Mori poured muscle relaxant into the IV
tubes of as many as 20 patients during nearly two years as a nurse at the private Hokuryo Clinic, in the city of Sendai, northern Japan.
Like convicted British murderer Dr Harold Shipman, many of his victims were elderly women, including five in their 80s and 90s. One was a nursery school boy.
The daughter of an 88-year-old woman described how her mother, who was due to be discharged a few hours later, took a drastic turn for the worse after being ministered to by Mori and died soon after.
"Her ears were turning paler by the moment," she told the Yomiuri newspaper.
"Then she could not respond to my cries."
Reports quoting police sources said the suspect had admitted using vecuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant used in the process of applying a general anaesthetic. Half a milligram of the drug is enough to kill a person, by paralysing the muscles in the heart.
"I did a horrible thing," Mori was quoted as having told police.
"I did it to a little more than 10 patients. There were others, but I can't remember them all."
Unlike Dr Shipman, there appeared to be no financial motive for the killings. Mori has reportedly said he was experiencing "many causes for frustration," including irritating colleagues and abandonment by his live-in girlfriend.
He was arrested at the weekend for the attempted murder of an 11-year-old girl, who fell into a coma last October after being admitted for suspected appendicitis.
Suspicious doctors at the clinic went to the police in December and Mori left the clinic soon after.
The deaths were all explained away at the time as being the result of natural causes.
- HERALD CORRESPONDENT
