A Texas nurse is on trial for allegedly killing four patients who were recovering from heart surgery.
William George Davis, 37, has been charged with capital murder of multiple people and aggravated assault in the 2017 deaths of four patients — John Lafferty, Ronald Clark, Christopher Greenway and Joseph Kalina — who were recovering at the Christus Trinity Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler, Texas.
According to prosecutors, all four patients had been stable following surgery before each suffered stroke-like symptoms. Subsequent CT scans showed abnormal arterial spaces in their brains that hadn’t been there previously, and Davis was the only nurse who was on-duty at the time of their deaths, prosecutors said.
Davis allegedly injected air into the arteries of the four patients, causing air embolisms that led to their deaths.
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
In opening statements on Tuesday, Smith County District Attorney Jacob Putnam said, “No one expects this is going to happen to them — certainly not in a hospital,” The Associated Press reported.
“It turns out a hospital is the perfect place for a serial killer to hide,” Putnam added.
Davis’s attorney, Phillip Hayes, argued that his client is an innocent person who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The trial is expected to last for four to six weeks. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.