A Texas nurse has been convicted after he knowingly and intentionally injected air into patients' arterial lines, killing four and injuring two. The nurse reportedly murdered the patients purely for the thrill of it and "liked to kill people."
William Davis, 37, of Hallsville, was found guilty of the horrific killings Tuesday. He injected air into the four patients' arteries after they underwent heart surgery at the Christus Trinity Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler in 2017 and 2018. He killed John Lafferty, Ronald Clark, Christopher Greenway and Joseph Kalina. Tyler is a city in eastern Texas.
According to media reports, all the four patients were in stable condition after their surgery until they all suffered stroke-like symptoms, with CT scans showed abnormal arterial spaces in their brains. They suffered unexplained neurological problems and later died. Davis was the only nurse on duty at the time. Prosecutors planned to seek the death penalty during the sentencing phase, which was scheduled to start Wednesday.
Davis "Liked to Kill People"
The prosecution emphasized to the jury that Davis intentionally killed his victims by injecting air in their arterial lines, reported KLTV. He facilitated the crime purely because he enjoyed killing.
"There is a motive here for Will Davis. It's simple. He likes to kill people. He enjoyed going into the rooms and injecting them with air. If you watch the video on Kalina, he set at the end of the hall and he watched those monitors and he waited. That's because he liked it," prosecutor Chris Gatewood said. Earlier prosecutor Jacob Putman called him "a serial killer" who found the perfect place to hide in a hospital.
A Dallas Pulmonologist Discovered Davis Injected the Patients with Air Causing the Deaths
As reported by The Associated Press, during the trial, Dr. William Yarbrough, a Dallas-area pulmonologist and professor of internal medicine, explained to the jury how injecting air into the arterial system of the brain causes brain injury and death.
Yarbrough said he was able to determine there was air in the arterial system of the victims' brains by viewing images from brain scans — something he said he had never before observed in his decades in medicine.
He ruled out blood pressure problems or any other causes of death besides the injection of air and said it must have happened after the surgeries because the complications occurred while the patients were in recovery.
Social Media Reactions
Some netizens are calling the nurse "evil" and "monster," while others are telling "inject him back". One user said, "Another mental case!! Horrific criminal." Another said, "Inject him with colon air." One comment read, "Do the same to him." Another comment read, "Medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death in the U.S."
One user wrote, "And the hospital probably suspected it but did nothing along with his colleagues." Another shared, "He's a cold-hearted sick individual."
"Lethal injection is the appropriate way to dispense with this idiot," shared one user. "They should inject him with an air compressor attached to a football valve needle," said another.
