GP who tried to poison mother’s partner with fake Covid jab jailed for 31 years

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails

Sign up to our free breaking news emails

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

A GP who disguised himself as a nurse and poisoned his mother’s partner with a fake Covid jab in a plot to murder has been jailed for 31 years and five months.

Obsessed Dr Thomas Kwan previously pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Patrick O’Hara, 72, in an extraordinary plan that was motivated by money and caused his victim to develop a flesh-eating disease.

Mrs Justice Lambert, sitting at Newcastle Crown Court, said: “It was an audacious plan to murder a man in plain sight and you very nearly succeeded in your objective.”

At a previous hearing, Mr O’Hara said in his victim statement that he had no idea that Kwan was the community nurse who administered the fake Covid vaccine during a visit to the home he shared with the defendant’s mother in Newcastle city centre.

The jab caused intense pain, he felt as though his arm was on fire and he felt he should have died.

Mr O’Hara needed weeks of hospital treatment and plastic surgery after having some of the flesh on his arm removed, and said the attack left him “a shell of an individual”.

Kwan, who was obsessed with money and developed a deep knowledge of poisons, planned his murder bid for months by writing fake letters, supposedly from the NHS, offering Mr O’Hara a home visit in January this year.

The married 53-year-old was motivated by greed after finding out that his mother, Jenny Leung, had made a will which allowed Mr O’Hara to stay in her home should she die before him.

The couple have split up since her son’s attempt on his life.

Peter Makepeace KC, prosecuting, said at a previous hearing: “The motive for this attempt to kill was to remove an impediment to his inheritance.”

Kwan, a Sunderland-based GP, refused to tell police which poison he had used as medics tried to save Mr O’Hara.

His victim responded with stoicism to his physical suffering, the court heard, but he has since developed post-traumatic stress disorder.

Officers scoured CCTV and were able to track Kwan, still disguised as a nurse, back to a city centre hotel and then to his home in Ingleby Barwick, Teesside.

In his garage they discovered an array of dangerous chemicals which the GP had amassed.

On his computer they found the instructions on how to make the chemical weapon ricin.

It was first thought he had used ricin on Mr O’Hara but a poisons expert said iodomethane, which is used in pesticides, was more likely.

Kwan went on trial last month and changed his plea to guilty after the prosecution opened the case against him.

Paul Greaney KC, defending, said the GP was previously of positive good character, and had “ruined his life”.

He described Kwan’s disguise, when he passed himself off as a nurse, as “amateurish” and “clumsy”.