Ex-Nurse Served 3rd Arrest Warrant in Serial Murder Case

August 19, 2018

Yokohama- A former nurse at a hospital in Yokohama, the capital of Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, was served a third arrest warrant on Saturday in a serial poisoning murder case about two years ago.

The suspect, Ayumi Kuboki, 31, admitted the fresh murder allegations against her, the Kanagawa prefectural police department said.

According to the third arrest warrant, Kuboki allegedly killed Asae Okitsu, 78, by injecting an antiseptic into an intravenous drip bag for her kept at the nurse station on the fourth floor of Oguchi Hospital, now Yokohama Hajime Hospital, around between 7:45 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 15, 2016.

Okitsu's condition worsened suddenly after the intravenous drip was administered to the patient by a different nurse on the morning of Sept. 16, and she died around 1:40 p.m. the same day, according to the police.

Okitsu was initially judged to have died of illness. But the same surfactant substance as that used in the antiseptic was detected in her blood sampled before her death.

When Okitsu was hospitalized on Sept. 13 the same year, she was not in serious condition.

Kuboki was served two arrest warrants last month, on suspicion of similarly poisoning two 88-year-old male inpatients to death in September 2016. At the hospital, the two men were in the same room, and Okitsu was in a different room. Jiji Press