Nurse charged with killing Canada retirement home residents
A nurse has been arrested and charged with murdering eight elderly residents under her care at retirement homes in Canada’s Ontario province, police said Tuesday.
The alleged killings occurred between 2007 and 2014 at two private facilities where Elizabeth Wettlaufer worked, authorities said.
The 49-year-old faces eight counts of first-degree murder.
The male and female victims aged 75 to 96 “were administered a drug,” Ontario Provincial Police detective superintendent Dave Truax told a nationally-televised press conference.
“We’re not in a position at this time to comment further on the specifics of the drug as it forms part of the evidence that is now before the courts,” he said.
An investigation was triggered in September by a tip that “a nurse had involvement in the murder of eight elderly patients while she worked at several long-term care facilities in Woodstock and London,” said Woodstock police chief William Renton.