Teesside GP 'planned to kill mother's partner in Newcastle with fake Covid booster jab'
Thomas Kwan is a partner at a GP surgery in Sunderland
Last updated 3rd Oct 2024
A respected GP devised an "audacious" plan to kill his mother's partner by disguising himself as a community nurse and poisoning him with a fake Covid booster jab, a court has heard.
Thomas Kwan, 53, who is a partner of a surgery in Sunderland, denies attempting to murder Patrick O'Hara, then aged 71, at his mother's home in Newcastle city centre on January 22.
He also denies an alternative charge of grievous bodily harm with intent.
Kwan has pleaded guilty to administering a noxious substance but the Crown's case is that he meant to kill the pensioner.
Peter Makepeace KC, prosecuting, told Newcastle Crown Court: "Sometimes, occasionally perhaps, the truth really is stranger than fiction.
"The case you are about to try, on any view, is an extraordinary case.
"Mr Thomas Kwan, the defendant in the case, was in January of this year a respected and experienced medical doctor in general practice with a GP's surgery based in Sunderland.
"From November 2023 at the latest, and probably long before then, he devised an intricate plan to kill his mother's long-term partner, a man called Patrick O'Hara.
"On any view that man had done absolutely nothing to offend Mr Kwan in any way whatsoever.
"He was however a potential impediment to Mr Kwan inheriting his mother's estate upon her death.
"Mr Kwan used his encyclopaedic knowledge of, and research into, poisons to carry out his plan.
"That plan was to disguise himself as a community nurse, attend Mr O'Hara's address, the home he shared with the defendant's mother, and inject him with a dangerous poison under the pretext of administering a Covid booster injection."
Mr Makepeace said the plan involved Kwan forging NHS documentation, disguising himself, using false number plates and booking in to a hotel using a false name.
He said: "It was an audacious plan, it was a plan to murder a man in plain sight, to murder a man right in front of his own mother's eyes, that man's life partner."
Mr Makepeace said the defendant will say his intention was to cause "no more than mild pain or discomfort".
The trial continues.