GP 'planned to kill mother's partner with fake Covid jab'

Thomas Kwan denies attempting to murder Patrick O’Hara

- TOM WILKINSON

A “money-obsessed” GP devised an elaborate plan to kill his mother’s partner by disguising himself as a community nurse and poisoning him with a fake Covid booster jab, a court has heard.

Police initially thought Thomas Kwan used the poison ricin in an attempt to kill Patrick O’Hara, 72, at his mother’s home in Newcastle city centre on 22 January this year.

Kwan, 53, denies attempted murder and an alternative charge of grievous bodily harm with intent. He has pleaded guilty to administering a noxious substance but the Crown’s case is that he meant to kill his mother’s partner of more than 20 years, who developed a rare flesh-eating disease as a result of the jab in his arm.

Newcastle Crown Court has heard how the GP developed an “encyclopaedic knowledge” of poisons and police discovered an array of dangerous chemicals in his garage at the family home in Ingleby Barwick, Teesside.

Peter Makepeace, KC, prosecuting, said: “Sometimes, occasionally perhaps, the truth really is stranger than fiction. The case you are about to try, on any view, is an extraordinary case. Mr Thomas Kwan, the defendant in the case, was in January of this year a respected and experienced medical doctor in general practice with a GP’s surgery based in Sunderland.

“From November 2023 at the latest, and probably long before then, he devised an intricate plan to kill his mother’s long-term partner, a man called Patrick O’Hara. On any view that man had done absolutely nothing to offend Mr Kwan in any way whatsoever.