Twenty patients at a Sendai clinic died or fell into critical condition at the hands of a 29-year-old male nurse arrested on suspicion of attempting to kill an 11-year-old girl, police sources said Wednesday.
Ten of the 20 died, another seven to eight remain in serious or critical condition, while the remaining patients have recovered. All had been given drugs intravenously, without authorization, by nurse Daisuke Mori, the sources alleged.
The same day, police said that blood samples from three patients who received intravenous drips from Mori during the roughly one-month period since the incident with the 11-year-old girl also showed traces of drugs such as muscle relaxants.
Police have been analyzing a blood sample taken from one of the deceased to see what drug Mori may have used, with an eye to serving him with a fresh arrest warrant on suspicion of murder.