By South China Morning Post | Created at 2024-10-17 15:59:32 | Updated at 2024-10-17 19:32:49
3 hours ago
An elderly man in Britain who suffered from a life-threatening flesh-eating disease after being injected with pesticide by his partner’s son, a Hong Kong-born doctor, has told a court he was “left a shell of an individual” and felt he had been “to hell and back”.
Former environmental analyst Patrick O’Hara spoke about his ordeal as he gave a victim impact statement at a sentencing hearing in Newcastle Crown Court on Thursday morning, local time.
O’Hara, 71 at the time of the incident on January 22, was injected with a pesticide administered by Dr Thomas Kwan, 53, under the guise of being given a Covid-19 booster jab.
He later developed a flesh-eating disease on his arm, with part of it needing to be amputated and he spent a week in a high-dependency unit at hospital.
Kwan, a partner at the Happy House Surgery in the nearby city of Sunderland, initially denied the murder attempt but changed his plea earlier this month after hearing the prosecution open its case against him.
Kwan, who lived with his wife and young son in a detached house on an executive estate in Ingleby Barwick, Teesside, wore a disguise consisting of a fake beard and hairpiece before administering the injection at his mother’s house in Newcastle that she shared with O’Hara, the court heard.
