Czech male nurse charged with murdering patients

Nov 30, 2007, 15:28 GMT

Prague - Czech prosecutors Friday charged a male nurse with allegedly murdering seven patients and attempting to kill another 10 at an eastern Bohemian hospital last year, CTK news agency reported.

The medic, Petr Zelenka, 31, confessed to injecting five patients with high doses of heparin, a drug that prevents blood clots. The medication caused the victims to bleed to death.

The man allegedly killed to overcome work burnout, prosecutors said.

'He said he wanted to experience some action. He wanted to see how other medics and doctors would try to solve the situation he caused,' CTK cited Pavel Buzga, a spokesman for the Hradec Kralove county state attorney's office, as saying.

Suspect's lawyer told reporters that Zelenka remembered administering the drug to five people.

'I was telling myself I will not administer it again. I repeated it to myself. Then I went to work and did it again. I was not able to stop it,' the Mlada Fronta Dnes newspaper quoted Zelenka from a letter to his parents.

The hospital in the town of Havlickuv Brod, 100 kilometres east of Prague, fired the male nurse in September 2006 after a series of suspicious deaths at its anaesthesiology and resuscitation department. The police then arrested Zelenka in December.

Zelenka faces between 25 years to life in prison if convicted. His trial should start within three months, reports said.