Regional daily: former hospital head charged in connection with serial-murder case

The former head of a hospital in Havlíčkův Brod, east Bohemia, is facing charges for allegedly failing to alert the authorities in time over suspicious deaths at the site, the regional daily Jihlavský děnik reported on Friday. The Havlíčkův Brod Hospital was the site of a series of murders in 2006 by suspect Petr Zelenka; he is currently on trial. Mr Zelenka, then employed as a nurse at the facility is charged with having murdered seven patients and attempting to kill ten others, by injecting them with lethal or would-be lethal doses of the blood-thinning drug heparin. The former hospital director, Josef Pejchl, dismissed any wrong-doing in connection with the case, saying he had alerted the authorities; if found guilty of criminal negligence, he could face up to three years in prison.