Nurse Killed Four Patients By Injecting Them With Air After Heart Surgery

A Texas nurse has been convicted on capital murder charges on Tuesday following the death of four patients he had intentionally injected with air after their respective heart surgeries. The conviction came more than three years following his arrest.

The Smith County jury deliberated for about an hour on Tuesday before returning a guilty verdict for William George Davis, 37, of Hallsville, as prosecutors sought the death penalty during the sentencing phase, WAFB reported.

He initially entered a not guilty plea at the start of his trial in the 114th District Court following his indictment on charges of capital murder of multiple people, murder, and five counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Court documents show that Davis was accused of injecting patients John Lafferty, Ronald Clark, Christopher Greenway, and Joseph Kalina with air while recovering at the Christus Trinity Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler in 2017 and 2018.

The patients then suffered fatal neurological symptoms following the incident despite being in stable condition following their successful operations.

During the trial, Dr. William Yarbrough, a Dallas-area pulmonologist and professor of internal medicine, told the jury that an injection of air into the arterial system of the brain can trigger brain injury and death, according to the New York Daily News.

He detected the air in the victims' arterial system after scans revealed images he had never before observed in patients who underwent heart surgery in his decades in medicine.

The court also heard Davis was on duty during the death of the men.

However, Phillip Hayes, his legal representative, contends it was a mere coincidence and that his client was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He insisted the hospital had issues and was using their former nurse as a scapegoat for the deaths.

Meanwhile, in his closing arguments, prosecutor Chris Gatewood would note Davis “liked to kill people."

For five years, Davis worked for Christus Trinity Mother Frances Louis and Peaches Owen Heart Hospital in Tyler, the Tyler Paper noted. He was sacked from the nursing post on Feb. 15, 2018, about a week after hospital officials approached the police about the alleged deliberate killing.