A French doctor named Frédéric Péchier stands accused of poisoning as many as 30 patients just so he could flex his resuscitation muscles in an emergency situation.
Per local publication France 24, the 53-year-old worked as an anaesthetist for 11 years between the Saint-Vincent Clinic and the Franche-Comté Polyclinic when these disturbing cases were alleged to have happened.
12 of his 'victims' passed away and now he's on trial at the Doubs Assize Court in Besançon as of today (September 8).
Péchier denies all charges.
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The youngest individual to brush shoulders with the alleged criminal doctor has been identified as simply Teddy, and pulled through two separate heart attacks during a routine tonsil operation back in 2016.
Péchier is accused of tampering with his co-workers' paracetamol bags and anaesthesia pouches just so he could incite life-endangering scenarios and step in to save the day.
The investigation commenced when Sandra Simard survived a cardiac arrest during a procedure in early 2017, according to Le Monde. A potentially lethal dose of potassium was later discovered in a bag of saline used for her anaesthesia.
Simard was free of health issues at the time, yet the BBC reports that her heart completely ceased beating when under the knife for some spinal attention.
Péchier helped to revive her after an intensive care physician failed to do so.
Prosecutor Etienne Manteaux said of the defendant: "What he is accused of is poisoning healthy patients in order to harm colleagues with whom he was in conflict. Frédéric Pechier was the first responder when cardiac arrest occurred. He always had a solution."
Apparently, the Frenchman would blame his colleagues for most of the poisonings, alluding to 'medical errors' on their part.
Prior to the trial kicking off, Péchier admitted to RTL that he was 'apprehensive' about entering the court, yet insisted he had 'strong arguments and I'm not going into it reluctantly.'
"It's very easy to accuse people, it's harder to prove things," argued one of his lawyers, Randall Schwerdorffer.
When questioned on the suffering of the many families connected to this case, the father-of-three shared: "I understand it completely, but on the other hand, I am not responsible for their distress."
The suspect has been absent from the medical world since 2017, and instead of facing incarceration he's been under judicial supervision.
The Péchier trial is expected to last until December, and the doc could receive life imprisonment if convicted.
Dan Seddon