In autumn 2020, an arrest in Munich made the headlines: a nurse is said to have tried to kill three patients in the hospital. Now it turns out that everything could have been much worse.
Munich – The public prosecutor’s office has significantly expanded its murder investigation against a nurse from a Munich clinic.
In the meantime, the investigators are assuming “numerous cases in the lower double-digit range”, as the spokeswoman for the Munich I public prosecutor, Anne Leiding, told the German Press Agency. She did not say whether it was attempted or completed homicide.
About a year ago, the public prosecutor had accused the young man of two completed and three attempted homicides. “Due to the extensive investigations, it is not yet clear when charges will be brought,” said Leiding.
The case first made headlines in November 2020. At that time, the authorities announced that they were investigating three cases on suspicion of attempted murder. When he was arrested, the public prosecutor accused the 24-year-old of having put three patients aged 54, 90 and 91 in mortal danger with medication out of sheer craving for recognition, in order to then shine in their rescue.
According to the public prosecutor, this is suggested by chat logs. “To risk someone’s life to then be seen as a white knight, of course we classify that as base motives,” said the spokeswoman after the arrest.
Nurse denies allegations
An attentive senior physician at the Klinikum Rechts der Isar was taken aback because the condition of two patients had suddenly and inexplicably deteriorated. Internal investigations revealed evidence of a similar case in which the accused was also on duty. The suspicion: the nurse injected the patient with an overdose of a drug that should not be given to them. Traces of these non-prescribed drugs were found in the patients’ blood. The clinic reported the nurse, who denied the allegations made when he was arrested. The public prosecutor’s office did not say whether he has since commented on the allegations.
The trained geriatric nurse from North Rhine-Westphalia had come to the clinic since July 2020 via a temporary work agency and was mainly employed there in the so-called guard station, an intermediate station between the intensive care and normal wards, where the sick were cared for around the clock. The police investigative team dealing with the case is therefore called the “guard station”.
Similar case in Oldenburg
In the clinic on the right of the Isar, the alleged crime scene, nobody wanted to comment on the case at the moment. “After consultation with the investigative authorities, only they will inform you about the case. We are cooperating very closely with the authorities,” said a spokeswoman. The spokeswoman also did not want to comment on the question of whether safety precautions in the clinic had been tightened.
The case is reminiscent of the patient killer Niels Högel, who became known as the “death nurse”, and who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019 by the Oldenburg Regional Court for murder in 85 cases. He worked as a nurse in intensive care in clinics in Oldenburg and Delmenhorst and, according to the regional court, killed a total of 85 patients there by administering drugs that were not medically indicated. It is said that he was primarily concerned with being able to try to resuscitate the patients afterwards and to look good in front of colleagues. dpa
