GP jailed for 31 years over 'audacious' fake Covid jab murder plot

A GP who disguised himself as a community nurse and tried to kill his mother’s partner with a fake Covid jab has been jailed for 31 years.

Dr Thomas Kwan attempted to murder Patrick O’Hara, 72, in an extraordinary plan motivated by money after the GP learned his mother Jenny Leung had made a will which allowed Mr O’Hara to stay in her home should she die before him. The fake jab left the victim with a flesh-eating disease and turned him into a "shell of an individual", a court heard.

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

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A court heard how Kwan clumsily disguised himself as a community nurse and administered the fake Covid vaccine to an oblivious Mr O'Hara during a visit to the home he shared with Ms Leung in Newcastle city centre. The jab caused the victim 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. He and Ms Leung have split up since her son’s attempt on his life.

Kwan, a married 53-year-old, previously pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Mr O’Hara and has now been jailed for 31 years and five months.

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.”

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”.