British doctor who pretended to be a nurse poisoned her mother's partner gets 31 years in prison

A British doctor who was unhappy with his inheritance and injected his mother's boyfriend with a poison introduced as a vaccine for COVID-19 was sentenced on Wednesday to 31 years in prison.

Dr. Thomas Kwan she posed as a visiting nurse to inject Patrick O'Hara with the poison that caused life-threatening flesh-eating disease. Kan believed O'Hara was standing in the way of one day inheriting his mother's home, officials said.

“It was a clever plan to kill the man on sight and he almost succeeded,” Justice Christina Lambert said. “Of course you were obsessed with money and especially, the money you thought you were entitled to.”

Kwan, 53, pleaded guilty last month at Newcastle Crown Court to attempted murder.

O'Hara, 72, survived after spending several weeks in hospital. Poisoning and the amputation of part of his arm to prevent a flesh-eating disease, called necrotizing fasciitis, from spreading.

O'Hara previously told Newcastle Crown Court that he had become a “shell” of himself, the BBC reported.

O'Hara and Kwan's mother, Jenny Leung, have separated.

Police used body camera footage to track down Kwan.

They discovered that he had hatched an elaborate conspiracy by sending fake letters with National Health Service logos, links and a QR code to home visits to get a COVID booster at O'Hara. Kwan disguised himself in head-to-toe protective gear, tinted goggles and a surgical mask and drove to his appointment in January using fake license plates.

Before Kwan injected O'Hara in the arm, the doctor spent 45 minutes at the hospital, speaking in a broken Asian accent and doing blood tests and medical tests, the BBC reported.

Kwan, who has been described as a highly poisoned person, used iodomethane, a substance found in pesticides that he thought would be difficult for doctors to detect, the judge said.

The police found arsenic, liquid mercury and castor beans, which can be used to make the chemical weapon ricin, when they searched his house. He had instructions on how to make ricin on his computer.

Kwan was saddened to receive a small portion of his inheritance when his father died. He had a strained relationship with his mother and learned that she had a provision in her will that would have allowed O'Hara to live in her home if she predeceased him.

A doctor had installed spyware on her mother's computer years ago to track her finances, the BBC reported.

“Your anger and resentment towards your mother and Mr O'Hara was related to money and your belief that you were not being given the money you thought you deserved,” the judge said.

O'Hara said justice had been done with the sentence.