ROME: An Italian nurse has been arrested on suspicion of killing 13 elderly patients in the intensive care ward where she had worked for decades, police said on Thursday.
Fausta Bonino, 56, allegedly killed the patients aged between 61 and 88, over the course of 2014 and 2015 at a hospital in the Tuscan town of Piombino, local police said. The “hospital ward killer,” as police have called her, administered lethal doses of a blood-thinning drug into her victims’ intravenous drips. Twelve died of internal bleeding and one of cardiac arrest, police said.
Investigators believe the victims, all seriously but not terminally ill, died as a result of being given strong doses of anticoagulant drugs used to prevent blood clotting, triggering internal bleeding.
Bonino was arrested after a study of all the recent abnormal deaths at the hospital identified her as being the only staff member involved in every case, the AGI news agency reported.
“In the horror rankings we have reached a new peak of human misery,” Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin said in a statement. Bonino has been imprisoned pending formal charges.
Her case follows the arrest in October 2014 of Daniela Poggiali, a then 42-year-old nurse who is suspected of killing up to 38 of her patients and is awaiting trial for the murder of one of them.
Poggiali achieved global notoriety after it emerged she had taken ‘selfies’ next to recently deceased patients and as a result of reports that she had given huge doses of potassium to sick people she found “annoying.”
They did not identify the suspect, who worked at a hospital in Piombino, a city on the Tuscan coast. The alleged murders all took place in 2014 and 2015, although she had worked there for many years prior to that.
Some of the victims, men and women aged between 61 and 88, were found to have 10 times the normal dose of the drug Heparin in their bloodstream even though they had not been prescribed it.
The suspect was the only member of hospital staff working when all 13 of the suspicious deaths occurred, Carabinieri police commander Gennero Riccardi told reporters.
When she became a suspect and was transferred out of intensive care in October of last year, the mortality rate of the ward fell from 20 percent to 12 percent, he said.
“We do not yet know of a specific motive,” Riccardi said. “But the suspect suffers from depression.” She had been receiving psychological treatment for many years, he added.
Police detained the woman late on Wednesday when she returned from a holiday with her husband. The families of the victims have not yet been informed that their relatives may have been murdered, police said.
Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin called the case “chilling, hideous,” in a statement in which she said: “It isn’t the first time that nurses have been found to be serial killers.”
Earlier this month, a nurse in the city of Ravenna was given a life sentence for murdering a patient with a lethal injection of potassium. She is under investigation for some 10 more suspicious deaths and is appealing her conviction.
‘Killer nurse’ held for slaying 13 patients
‘Killer nurse’ held for slaying 13 patients
Shooter kills 9 at Canadian school and residence
- The shooter was found dead with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound
- A total of 27 people were wounded in the shooting, including two with serious injuries
TORONTO: A shooter killed nine people and wounded dozens more at a secondary school and a residence in a remote part of western Canada on Tuesday, authorities said, in one of the deadliest mass shootings in the country’s history.
The suspect, described by police in an initial emergency alert as a “female in a dress with brown hair,” was found dead with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
The attack occurred in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, a picturesque mountain valley town in the foothills of the Rockies.
A total of 27 people were wounded in the shooting, including two with serious injuries, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said he was “devastated” by the “horrific acts of violence” and announced he was suspending plans to travel to the Munich Security Conference on Wednesday, where he had been set to hold talks with allies on transatlantic defense readiness.
Police said an alert was issued about an active shooter at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School on Tuesday afternoon.
As police searched the school, they found six people shot dead. A seventh person with a gunshot wound died en route to hospital.
Separately, police found two more bodies at a residence in the town.
The residence is “believed to be connected to the incident,” police said.
At the school, “an individual believed to be the shooter was also found deceased with what appears to be a self?inflicted injury,” police said.
Police have not yet released any information about the age of the shooter or the victims.
“We are devastated by the loss of life and the profound impact this tragedy has had on families, students, staff, and our entire town,” the municipality of Tumbler Ridge said in a statement.
Tumbler Ridge student Darian Quist told public broadcaster CBC that he was in his mechanics class when there was an announcement that the school was in lockdown.
He said that initially he “didn’t think anything was going on,” but started receiving “disturbing” photos about the carnage.
“It set in what was happening,” Quist said.
He said he stayed in lockdown for more than two hours until police stormed in, ordering everyone to put their hands up before escorting them out of the school.
Trent Ernst, a local journalist and a former substitute teacher at Tumbler Ridge, expressed shock over the shooting at the school, where one of his children has just graduated.
He noted that school shootings have been a rarity occurring every few years in Canada compared with the United States, where they are far more frequent.
“I used to kind of go: ‘Look at Canada, look at who we are.’ But then that one school shooting every 2.5 years happens in your town and things... just go off the rails,” he told AFP.
‘Heartbreak’
While mass shootings are extremely rare in Canada, last April, a vehicle attack that targeted a Filipino cultural festival in Vancouver killed 11 people.
British Columbia Premier David Eby called the latest violence “unimaginable.”
Nina Krieger, British Columbia’s minister of public safety, said it was “one of the worst mass shootings in our province’s and country’s history.”
The Canadian Olympic Committee, whose athletes are competing in the 2026 Winter Games in Italy, said Wednesday it was “heartbroken by the news of the horrific school shooting.”
Ken Floyd, commander of the police’s northern district, said: “This has been an incredibly difficult and emotional day for our community, and we are grateful for the cooperation shown as officers continue their work to advance the investigation.”
Floyd told reporters the shooter was the same suspect police described as “female” in a prior emergency alert to community members, but declined to provide any details on the suspect’s identity.
The police said officers were searching other homes and properties in the community to see if there were additional sites connected to the incident.
Tumbler Ridge, a quiet town with roughly 2,400 residents, is more than 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) north of Vancouver, British Columbia’s largest city.
“There are no words sufficient for the heartbreak our community is experiencing tonight,” the municipality said.
