Between March and June 2022, five newborns died and another eight were about to lose their lives in the main public neonatal hospital in the city of Córdoba, in center of Argentina. , but the suspicions began to grow until two neonatologists gave notice to justice and a macabre pattern was discovered. Babies were killed with potassium and insulin injections. The nurse who supplied those lethal injections, Brenda Agüero, has been sentenced by a popular jury to life imprisonment. Three high positions from the Hospital and the former Secretary of Provincial Health have also received penalties between four and five years in prison for covering up these crimes that shocked the country.
The relatives hung photographs of the victims and drawings of their tiny feet in front of the court of the Court. This Wednesday, they heard the sentence in silence and, shortly after, some exploded in tears and others in insults against this 30 -year -old nurse and the other convicted, according to the local media that covered the trial. “Killer,” the sister of one of the killed babies shouted.
Agüero had been working at the Ramón Carrillo Carrillo de Córdoba hospital for a year and eight months when he committed the first murder for which he has just been convicted. No one saw her inject the lethal substance. That allowed the crime to go unnoticed, although the victim, Francisco, was a healthy baby who was born by caesarean section without complications on March 18, 2022. At two hours he decompensated and led him to intensive care. They could not save his life. Benjamin, Damaris Bustamante’s baby, was born on Saturday, April 23 of the same year and only lived ten hours. The employer was repeated with Ibrahim, the son Julieta Guardia gave birth on May 23.
Among the medical and nursing staff of the hospital they began to wake up suspicion about those deaths without obvious cause. A vitamin K lot was analyzed in search of any possible pollution, without positive result. Despite suspicions, no one gave an alarm. Until June 6. That day, Yoselin Rojas gave birth to a girl, Angeline, at 11 in the morning and the baby died at 4 in the afternoon without the cause of apparent death. A few hours later a second baby died, Melody. A pair of neonatologists from the hospital went to the closest judicial unit and put a complaint.
Justice ordered autopsies to newborns and the results were identical: cardiac arrest due to hyperpotsemia, that is, due to excess blood potassium. They did not find poorly labeled blisters or protocol failures. Someone had administered those lethal doses of potassium intentionally.
Repeated behavior
The testimony of families helped rebuild what happened. Yoselin Rojas said she was with her baby when Agüero took her without giving her any explanation. He didn’t see her alive again. Ibrahim’s sister, another of the victims, acknowledged that it was that same nurse who took the newborn to allegedly make a check after having told her mother that she had to go down to the guard because someone had asked about her. The story of the other relatives before the jury was similar. They recognized Agüero as the nurse who was in the care of parturients and hospital records confirm their presence at the scene in all cases investigated.
Prosecutor Raúl Garzón explained that Agüero’s behavior pattern included having “chosen healthy babies, which have fewer controls than one committed.” The nurse had practice in the placement of injections and access to medications and babies. They took them with some excuse and inoculated the harmful substances that caused death. Garzón stressed that it was not bad praxis or human errors, but a series of deliberate and carefully executed attacks.
The jury deliberated for ten hours before condemning Agüero to Perpetual by majority. It was declared guilty of five homicides and also eight attempts at homicide. Among the babies that survived, two have sequelae for the substances administered by the nurse.
he has declared himself innocent throughout the trial. He imperturbable the testimony of the affected mothers and in their last words before the verdict accused them of acting according to a script.
The jury also sentenced sentences between four and five years in prison for cover -up to the former director of the hospital, Liliana Asís; to the Undersecretary of Provincial Health, Pablo Carvajal; to the former administrative director of the hospital, Alejandro Escudero; Already the former head of neonatology, Marta Gómez Flores.
