Ayumi Kuboki, aged 31, was arrested by police earlier this week on suspicion of murdering over 20 patients while working as a nurse. She was brought to police’s attention after another nurse noticed bubbles in the IV bag of n 88-year-old patient Nobuo Yamaki who died in September 2016. Bubbles in an IV bag can sometimes indicate that it has been interfered with, and doctors soon discovered that Mr Yamaki had passed away with large amounts of antiseptic in his blood stream, confirming that he had been poisoned.
AdspaceInvestigations were then made towards another patient who shared a room with Mr Yamaki, and when antiseptic was found in their blood stream the investigation widened its scope significantly. Another two patients were found to have had antiseptic injected into their IV bags.
Towards the end of the investigation Ayumi Kuboki was arrested and allegedly confessed to the murder of over 20 patients. Her motivation seems to have been that she wanted to avoid the awkward task of informing families of a loved one’s death.
#Arrested former #nurse Ayumi Kuboki, 31, has admitted to killing 88-yr-old man in 2016 at #Yokohama #hospital, investigative sources say. He was found to have been poisoned with a surfactant compound added to an intravenous drip bag. https://t.co/cuuq6BtJbv
— Kyodo News - English (@kyodo_english) July 7, 2018
“It would be troublesome if that responsibility fell on me,” she apparently told investigators.
The investigation led to Kuboki’s arrest after police noticed that a set of empty IV bags at a work station. The empty bags all had small puncture marks near the rubber seal, and trace amounts of the same antiseptic could be found on the inner lining. Police then decided to confiscate the uniform of every nurse who had worked at that particular station and only Kuboki’s uniform was found to have trace amounts of the antiseptic in question.
Kuboki has insisted that she only targeted patients who were very ill, and that she did so because they were already going to die, and she wanted to speed the process up so that they would die before her next shift. However, have raised concerns regarding this supposed reasoning, stating that some of the patients who died were not terminally ill to begin with.
#AyumiKuboki, 31, was arrested at the weekend on suspicion of killing #SozoNishikawa, 88, by injecting his intravenous drip bag with disinfectant when she was working at #Oguchi hospital in #Yokohama. https://t.co/5O4pVMcqCX
— Francisco Taveira (@jftaveira1993) July 11, 2018
Interestingly, the same floor where Kuboki worked was also subject to a series of strange crimes. Uniforms were vandalised, and staff beverages were spiked with unknown substances. The crimes stopped in August 2016, just two months before the death of Mr Yamaki.
AdspaceIt is quite likely that Kuboki is what some experts describe as an “angel of death”; a sub-type of serial killer that often like to work as nurses, doctors, or carers, but who use their position of power to kill off patients out of a perverse compulsion to murder.
Harlold Shipman, from the UK, is one of the most prolific “angels of death” having supposedly killed hundreds of his patients over decades while working as a GP.
