The widow of a Rotterdam corona patient today testified for the first time during the trial of the German doctor who allegedly gave her husband a lethal injection. According to him, the treatment of the seriously ill Ronald B. (47) was ‘hopeless’ and he wanted to relieve his suffering after switching off the equipment. “It was a big mess,” said the mother of two young children in the courtroom in Essen.
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The 42-year-old woman sometimes had to break down her testimony in tears. The memories of the day in question, Friday 13 November, are still too fresh and too sensitive. The Dutchman blames the doctors on duty a lot. “It was a big mess. They have not spoken quietly to us,” the WDR heard her say. She said she didn’t feel like she knew what was going to happen.
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The wife was in the company of her brother-in-law and sister-in-law. They barely spoke German. Chief physician Andreas B. (45) spoke only poor English. An assistant doctor from another department gave an impromptu translation. Because of this turn of events, the woman “actually had the feeling that she had not been properly involved in the question of whether the equipment should be disconnected permanently.”
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Equipment turned off
A dialysis machine cleaned her husband’s blood, an Ecmo machine – a simplified form of a heart-lung machine – supplied it with oxygen because the ventilator was not sufficient. In addition, a fungus had infected his lungs, a common complication in corona patients, and he was bleeding from his nose and mouth, it wrote. The time in July on the basis of the 100-page indictment against the chief physician.
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Andreas B., an intensivist and anesthesiologist, informed the wife that there was no longer any prospect of recovery from her husband. According to the indictment, it is established that the woman ultimately agreed to turn off the equipment. After putting on protective clothing against the coronavirus, she went into the hospital room with her sister-in-law to say goodbye. The chief physician then turned off the heart-lung machine. Then Ronald B.’s heart rate and blood pressure dropped and a little later he died. According to the sister-in-law, herself a nurse, the values fell faster than she was used to.
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Potassium Chloride
After the testimony of B.’s wife, the suspect reassured her that he had kept to the agreements of the department team. The controversial injection he gave the Dutchman, in addition to sufentanil, sedalam and clonidine – common painkillers and tranquilizers – also contained potassium chloride, a nurse who witnessed the death told the police. An overdose of this would lead to cardiac arrhythmias or immediate cardiac arrest. In that case, there is no question of passive euthanasia, which is permitted in Germany, but of punishable active euthanasia. If a doctor does so on his own initiative, he is guilty of manslaughter.
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Andreas B. maintains that he not guilty of manslaughter because the injected cocktail was not lethal to the terminally ill Covid patient. After all, the equipment that kept him alive had already been turned off. But because he felt sorry for the relatives and wanted to shorten the suffering of their loved one, he wanted to show with the injection that he had done everything for them.
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Two more cases
The Public Prosecution Service accuses Andreas B. of two more cases of manslaughter in seriously ill corona patients which, according to the Public Prosecution Service, are ‘comparable’. It concerns a 65-year-old man who died on November 4 and a 50-year-old man who died on November 17. In both cases, the evidence is not yet enough to bring them to trial.
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