Killer Nurse To Spend At Least 35 Years In Jail

Nurse Victorino Chua has been jailed for life with a minimum of 35 years for the murder and poisoning of patients.

Sentencing him, Mr Justice Openshaw called his crimes "despicable and odious".

The judge said: "He has committed a dreadful crime and he must now pay the price."

Relatives of his victims packed the public gallery to see him sent down.

Sky North of England correspondent Nick Martin, at Manchester Crown Court, said Chua stared straight ahead and gave no reaction as he was sentenced.

Filipino father-of-two Chua injected insulin into saline solutions before returning them to storage leaving unsuspecting colleagues to administer the poison.

In other cases, Chua falsified patients' charts to increase the dosage of prescribed drugs.

The 49-year-old was convicted of murdering two patients and dozens of poisonings and attempted poisonings at Manchester Crown Court on Monday after a three-month trial.

In the summer of 2011, two years after Chua arrived at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport, patients suddenly started to suffer unexpected attacks caused by low blood sugar levels.

Two patients - Tracey Arden, 44, and Alfred Weaver, 83 - suffered agonising deaths as the insulin overdoses starved their brains of oxygen.

A third victim, Grant Misell, 41, survived, but has been told he might never recover from the serious brain damage he suffered at the nurse's hands.

Chua was cleared of murdering Arnold Lancaster, 71, but found guilty of attempting to cause him grievous bodily harm.

Outside court, Tracey Arden's brother Gary said: "The sentence that's been handed out by the judge today reflects, whilst it won't bring any of the victims, Tracey back, or rectify what's been done by Victorino Chua, I think it recognises the gravity of the offences and will also make sure he will never be able to harm anyone again in the future."

Asked how he felt about Chua, Mr Arden said: "Surprisingly nothing. He's been sentenced and the important thing is he's not able to do this to anybody else."

Mr Justice Openshaw said: "It is a striking, sinister and truly wicked feature of the case, he did not personally administer contaminated products directly to most of these patients but having left saline bags contaminated with insulin he did not know which nurse would unwittingly collect them and still less to which patient the nurse would then unwittingly administer the poison.

"It is as if he left it to fate to decide who would be the victim."

In all, Chua was convicted of two murders, 22 counts of attempted grievous bodily harm, one count of grievous bodily harm, seven attempts of administering poison and one count of administering poison.

In a letter found by police following his arrest, Chua had written what he described as "a bitter nurse confession".

The 13-page document, discovered in a kitchen drawer at his Stockport home, warned that there was "a devil" in him.

In broken English he said: "I'm writing this letter in case something happen to me my family can continue my case or can tell somebody to look at it and work out how an angel turn to an evil person."