The case has been causing a stir for years - and has kept the judiciary busy: an anesthetist administered contaminated anesthetic to several children in a dental practice in Kronberg, and a little girl died. The case was now heard again at the Frankfurt regional court and the man was sentenced to thirteen and a half years in prison.
Presiding judge Alexander El Duwaik said he was guilty of three counts of murder and attempted murder. Among other things, the 69-year-old acted with the intention of concealment. It is a “special procedure” that demanded a lot from us. “It became emotional for many witnesses.”
Girl died in dentist chair
What had happened? In September 2021, the doctor, who specialized in outpatient anesthesia in dental practices, first injected an adult woman and then four children with propofol from the same bottle in the Taunus practice. The anesthetic was already contaminated with the first child. The German doctor also committed other blatant hygiene errors and worked without the required assistant.
Despite their dire condition, he sent three of the children home. The four-year-old girl, who was last in line that day, died in the dentist's chair at night. A boy and another girl had to be artificially ventilated at the Frankfurt University Hospital and barely survived.
Among other things, the former doctor is said to have reassured the mother and grandmother of the four-year-old girl for hours and repeatedly claimed that hospitalization was not necessary until it was too late. When the other children also had symptoms of sepsis in the days after her death, he is said to have behaved similarly.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
The judge turned directly to the defendant: “What the hell were you thinking?” As a doctor with decades of experience, why didn't he call an ambulance? And why did he simply continue working in a practice in Bensheim the day after the “terrible evening”?
El Duwaik also referred to cases from the past. There was already a death of one of the doctor's patients in 2019. In addition, other former patients came forward during the first trial at the regional court. A woman in November 2020 suffered multi-organ failure after anesthesia he administered.
BGH had sent the case back for a new hearing
After the girl's death in the Kronberg practice, the man was sentenced in the first instance in 2024 to ten and a half years in prison by another chamber of the Frankfurt regional court for, among other things, manslaughter. The public prosecutor's office didn't go far enough: it successfully appealed to the Federal Court of Justice (BGH).
“Today was an important and correct verdict,” said public prosecutor Constanze Jung after the new verdict on Thursday. Above all, after six years, it finally answered the crucial question of why the defendant failed to take the children to a hospital in a timely manner. “The answer is because he wanted to cover up his previous medical errors.”
The public prosecutor's office had called for a life sentence in prison. The defense contradicted the account and justified his behavior as being overtired and overworked.
Why not a life sentence?
But why wasn't the 69-year-old sentenced to life in prison, as is usually the case with murder? Instead, the court made use of options for mitigation. The court explained, for example, that the defendant had partially confessed and that he did not belong to a particular criminal milieu. The judge also referred to the doctor's advanced age: the sentence could ultimately mean a life sentence for the defendant.
The trial on Thursday was interrupted for about an hour after a spectator left the room with a loud noise. The judgment is not final.
