Life support systems switched off by ex-worker

Patients' lives were put at risk when vital life-support systems were shut down at Guy's Hospital in south London by a former maintenance worker disgruntled at being made redundant, an Old Bailey jury was told yesterday.

After drinking heavily at a Christmas party at the hospital, Anthony McGrory used his intimate knowledge of the hospital's maintenance structure to go from floor to floor switching off vital life-saving equipment, Mark Dennis, for the prosecution, said.

This controlled the air supply, the water supply and the supply of medical air to the intensive care units for both adults and babies. Mr Dennis said it could have resulted in serious harm or death to patients. That no one died was a tribute to the efforts of the nursing staff on duty at night four days before Christmas in 1994.

Mr McGrory, 34, a former plumber and maintenance worker at the hospital, of Shirley, Croydon, south London, denies causing a public nuisance by switching off and isolating the electricity to various items of plant and machinery in the 30-storey tower block that holds 17 of Guy's wards.

Mr Dennis said he was caught because he became trapped on the 30th floor of the tower block by security grilles and could not reach lifts to make his get-away. He was found the following morning.

Mr Dennis alleged that Mr McGrory's motive had been to cause nuisance and annoyance regardless of the "obvious and serious risk to life". He had worked at the hospital for nine years before being made redundant in spring 1994. He had failed to find a new job by Christmas that year when he turned up uninvited at the party given by finance staff.

He drank heavily at the party. Among other people there was a man called Russell Stewart who had worked with Mr McGrory. Mr Stewart should have been on maintenance duty that night but he paid more attention to the party and drinking there and this provided Mr McGrory with "the incentive and opportunity to do what he did", Mr Dennis claimed.

He told the jury of the desperate efforts of nurses to help seriously- ill adults and babies when the ventilator alarms rang almost simultaneously in three intensive care wards at 1.30am.

A first-floor ward was full to capacity with 13 intensive care patients - 11 of them on ventilators to regulate their breathing. When the alarms went off "anxious nurses discovered the air supply had simply stopped".

Fortunately there were enough nurses on duty to manually ventilate the patients using air bags. Three intensive care babies in the same ward also had to be manually ventilated, said Mr Dennis.

On the ninth floor in another paediatric intensive care unit six out of the eight babies being cared for had to be manually ventilated. But there were not enough nurses for the emergency task and help had to be summoned from other floors.

On the 12th floor yet another baby in intensive care had to be ventilated with air bags until the supply was restored more than 15 minutes later. Maintenance staff found the supplies had been manually switched off.

When Mr McGrory was interviewed some three weeks later he denied being responsible telling police. "I wouldn't do nothing like that, I know what it could do."

He added that he believed if the air supply was switched off an alarm would automatically ring in the control room. This, the jury heard, had not happened. When the air went off the ventilators switched to their own emergency supplies and it was only when these ran out that the ventilator alarms signalled the air supply was used up.

The case continues today.