MUNICH: A Munich court sentenced a 27-year-old male nurse to life in prison on Monday for murdering two patients by deliberately administering unprescribed drugs so he could be “left in peace”.

The nurse, identified only as Mario G., was also found guilty on six counts of attempted murder, a spokesman for the Munich district court in southern Germany said.

During his trial, Mario G. admitted to injecting patients with sedatives and other drug cocktails while working in the recovery room at a Munich hospital. “I wanted to be left in peace,” Mario G. told the court.

Three of the attempts targeted the German intellectual and writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger in November 2020, but he survived. Enzensberger died two years later of natural causes, at the age of 93.

The two patients who died as a result of Mario G.’s actions were 80 and 89 years old.

According to prosecutors, Mario G. administered the drugs because he wanted to be left alone during his shift, when he was often hung over.

The case recalled that of notorious German nurse Niels Hoegel, who was sentenced in 2019 to life in prison for murdering 85 patients in his care.

Hoegel, believed to be Germany’s most prolific serial killer, murdered patients with lethal injections between 2000 and 2005, before he was eventually caught in the act.

In 2020, a Polish healthcare worker was sentenced to life in prison in Munich for killing at least three people with insulin.

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2023