A 27-year-old male nurse was sentenced to life in prison in Munich on Monday for the murder of two patients and six attempts on other patients, including German intellectual Hans-Magnus Enzensberger.
The nurse was employed mainly in on-call rooms at a Munich hospital, where patients were received after surgery. He was found guilty of injecting patients there with cocktails of unprescribed drugs.
Two patients, aged 80 and 87, succumbed to the injections after several days in a coma.
According to the court, the man was also guilty of six attempted murders, three of which targeted German essayist and translator Hans-Magnus Enzensberger in November 2020.
Enzensberger survived the attempts, before dying of natural causes on 24 November 2022 at the age of 93.
The nurse’s actions came to light after an orderly alerted the hospital’s management to the sudden deterioration of the patients. Blood tests later showed an overdose of drugs that had not been prescribed for them.
The nurse had allegedly acted to be quiet and to be able, in particular, to consult his cellphone. He was also regularly hungover or drunk during his shift.
“As I was drunk, I had only one option: to shut them up,” he explained at the hearing, the weekly Der Spiegel reported.
Germany has seen several similar cases in recent years.
