A doctor is facing a first-degree murder charge while a small Ontario town waits for answers following multiple suspicious deaths at a local hospital.
Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) charged 35-year-old Brian Nadler with one count of first-degree murder Friday and are looking into other deaths.
Police said Monday morning that Albert Poidinger, an 89-year-old from Pointe-Claire, Quebec, is the person Nadler is accused of killing. Poidinger was pronounced dead at the hospital the day police were called.
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A spokesperson for Hawkesbury and District General Hospital said in a press release that police were called to the hospital Thursday evening and an investigation is underway into an unspecified “number of suspicious deaths.”
“In collaboration with the OPP, we are reaching out to the concerned families,” the statement said. “We are equally concerned with our employees and physicians that may be affected by this difficult situation. We are providing them with employee assistance and post-traumatic counselling.”
Hawkesbury is a town of 10,000 located about an hour’s drive east of Ottawa and an hour west of Montreal.
The arrest came hours after the hospital confirmed its second COVID-19 outbreak and said five patients had died from COVID-19.
A spokesperson said Sunday the hospital will not comment further. Police have also been scant on details, not specifying how many deaths they are investigating.
Nadler lives in Dollard-Des-Ormeaux, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal. He practised in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Nevada before he was licensed in Ontario in February 2020.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan charged Nadler with two cases of unprofessional conduct when he was a resident at the University of Saskatchewan’s medical school in August 2014, following a verbal altercation with another doctor. According to documents from the college, Nadler referred to his colleague as a “bitch” in conversation with someone else and said he “felt like slapping her.” The other charge, levied on the same day, was for adding to a patient’s file without marking down the date.
The college dropped the charges after Nadler apologized and took courses in professional ethics and medical record-keeping. He was licensed in Saskatchewan from July 2014 until September 2018.
Nadler graduated from Montreal’s McGill University in 2010, then trained in surgery and internal medicine at the University of Alberta from 2011 to 2014 before moving to Saskatchewan, according to an online database listing his postgraduate training. He was a geriatric fellow at the University of Nevada for a year starting in September 2018 and is still licensed in the state.
A Twitter account appearing to be run by Nadler has just one post, a reply to actor Ryan Reynolds on March 17, 2020 encouraging people to follow COVID restrictions.
A former patient of Nadler’s told CBC he cared for her during cancer treatments and she “trusted him 100 per cent.”
“He was very gentle, very professional and very caring. So that’s why I’m shocked,” Pilon Poisson said.
A College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario spokesperson said in an email Sunday the college will immediately be looking into the “extraordinarily disturbing allegations” against Nadler.
The Office of the Chief Coroner is also investigating.
Nadler is scheduled to appear in court on April 6.
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