A French court has sentenced a doctor to life in jail for poisoning 30 child and adult patients, 12 of whom died, reportedly in an attempt to discredit co-workers.
Frederic Pechier, 53, worked as an anaesthetist in two clinics in the eastern city of Besancon, when patients went into cardiac arrest in suspicious circumstances between 2008 and 2017. Twelve could not be resuscitated.
Pechier’s youngest victim, a four-year-old, survived two cardiac arrests during routine tonsil surgery in 2016.Â
The oldest victim was 89.
“You will be incarcerated immediately,” presiding judge Delphine Thibierge said.
He was also banned from ever practising medicine again.
The prosecution alleged Frederic Pechier poisoned patients to show off his resuscitation skills and discredit co-workers. (AFP: Sebastien Bozon)
A lawyer from the firm representing him, Ornella Spatafora, said Pechier would appeal.
During the more than three-month trial, prosecutors called for Pechier to be jailed for life, saying he “used medicine to kill”.
They said he contaminated IV bags with potassium, local anaesthetics, adrenaline and even an anticoagulant to trigger cardiac arrest or haemorrhaging in patients being treated by colleagues.
His goal, prosecutors said, was to “psychologically hurt” caregivers with whom he was in conflict and to “feed his thirst for power”.
‘End of a nightmare’
Civil parties welcomed the verdict.
“It’s the end of a nightmare,” said Sandra Simard, who survived a cardiac arrest during back surgery aged 36.Â
A dose of potassium 100 times higher than normally prescribed was found in her rehydration pouch.
“Now we can have a quiet Christmas,” said Jean-Claude Gandon, who was poisoned during a urology operation aged 70 while Pechier was his anaesthetist.
An investigation was launched in 2017 after suspicious cardiac arrests were recorded during operations on patients considered low risk.
Pechier had argued during the probe that most of poisonings were down to “medical errors” by his colleagues.Â
He admitted during the trial that there had been a person poisoning patients in one of the two clinics where he worked, but said it was not him.
“I am not a poisoner,” he said.
One colleague described Pechier as a very good doctor with an “oversized ego”.
The verdict comes after a court in May sentenced retired doctor Joel Le Scouarnec to 20 years in prison after he confessed to sexually abusing or raping 298 patients, most of them children, between 1989 and 2014.
That case raised questions about how he was allowed to continue practising until retirement despite at least one colleague sounding the alarm.
AFP