GP who poisoned his mother's partner while dressed as a Covid nurse sentenced to 31 years | Newcastle

A “money-obsessed” GP who poisoned his mother’s partner while disguised as a nurse administering a fake Covid booster jab has been jailed for 31 years and five months.

Thomas Kwan, 53, denied attempting to murder Patrick O'Hara but changed his plea to guilty after just a day of evidence at his trial at Newcastle Crown Court.

The sentencing judge, Mrs Justice Lambert, described it on Wednesday as “an audacious plan to murder a man in full view”.

The court heard Kwan was obsessed with money and motivated by a “sense of entitlement” to his mother’s estate. He attempted to murder O'Hara, his mother's partner of 20 years, because he saw him as a “potential obstacle” to his inheritance.

This was despite Kwan being “himself a man of considerable means” and a “prosperous lifestyle” who had made an offer to buy a £2 million property in the south of England, said prosecutor Peter Makepeace KC. “It is not greed born of lack of money, it is not greed born of necessity,” Makepeace said. “It is simply greed born of greed.”

The court heard how Kwan devised an elaborate plan to murder 72-year-old O'Hara by disguising himself as a community nurse and injecting him with poison. Makepeace said the conspiracy involved Kwan forging NHS documents, disguising himself, using false number plates and booking into a hotel under a false name.

“It was an audacious plan,” Makepeace told the jury. “It was a plan to murder a man in full view, a man right in front of his own mother, the man's partner.”

At some point, police feared that the chemical weapon ricin had been used to kill O'Hara. The court heard that a Defense Department expert believed that iodomethane, a chemical used as a fumigant and pesticide, was the most likely poison Kwan used.

After the verdict, O'Hara thanked police and doctors and said he felt “justice was done.”

The poison caused O'Hara to develop a rare and life-threatening flesh-eating disease called necrotizing fasciitis.

He survived, but only after specialists removed large chunks of flesh from his arms in repeated surgeries.

The court heard O'Hara suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the crime and no longer had a relationship with Kwan's mother, Jenny Leung.

He chose to give his own victim impact statement in court, describing how he was now just a “shell of an individual” suffering from extreme fatigue and constantly on edge. “This incident should have been the end of me,” O'Hara said. “Without the medical intervention, I would definitely have lost not only my left arm, but also my life.”

He said it felt like his arm was on fire after the injection. “I remember immediately feeling excruciating pain as that needle entered my arm. I had never felt anything so painful in my life. I immediately thought something had gone wrong.”

But the “nurse” assured O'Hara that such a reaction was common. When he actually went to hospital, doctors assumed the problem was a botched Covid injection, the court heard.

O'Hara said he was afraid Kwan would be released and come after him. “I am afraid that he will harm my loved ones because I support the police in his prosecution,” he said.

Neither Kwan's mother nor O'Hara recognized Kwan behind his surgical gloves, mask and tinted glasses, and he appeared perfectly plausible as he completed a health questionnaire, took blood pressure and took blood and urine samples, the court heard.

Makepeace said a “particularly unpleasant” aspect of the case, revealed in prison letters to the defendant's wife, was that Kwan was angry that O'Hara was entitled to compensation. Kwan, a GP in Sunderland who lived with his wife and young son in Ingleby Barwick, Teesside, wrote: “An old man’s compensation for three young lives is ruined. Where is the justice in that?”

Paul Greaney KC, defending, said the GP had previously been of extremely good character and had “ruined his life”.

He described Kwan's disguise when he posed as a nurse as “amateurish” and “clumsy.”