German nurse handed life sentence for killing patients

A nurse in Germany has been handed a life sentence for two counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder after sedating patients so that they did not bother him at work.

Due to the particular seriousness of the offences, the Munich court ruled on Monday that he would almost certainly not be eligible for early release from prison after 15 years. The court also imposed a lifelong ban on working as a nurse.

The young man admitted in court that he had injected patients with drugs in a recovery ward at a hospital in Munich in order to keep them sedated.

In his defence, the man said that he had always drunk a lot of alcohol before his shifts and would sleep it off at work. Therefore, he wanted to make sure that the patients wouldn't disturb him.

"I made a big mistake," the accused said at the beginning of the trial in January.

According to the indictment, the man injected the patients with sedatives, adrenalin or blood thinners in a recovery ward, an intermediate ward between the intensive care unit and the normal ward.

Two 80- and 89-year-old patients died in 2020 at the Munich hospital he worked at.