A midwife in Japan has been arrested on suspicion of killing a 75-year-old hospital patient by contaminating his intravenous drip with human feces, police said Thursday.Miyuki Furukawa, a nurse at Kashiwa Tanaka Hospital in Chiba Prefecture, was arrested on July 15 and referred to prosecutors. He denied the allegations, telling police: “I did not mix feces in the tube.“However, investigators revealed that her phone history included searches such as: “Stool injection, will they die?”The victim died on the night of 31 January. An autopsy confirmed that the cause of death was multiple organ failure due to sepsis from multiple bacteria entering his bloodstream through a contaminated IV.Security cameras captured Furukawa entering and exiting the victim’s room several times during the night shift from January 29 to January 30. Although the victim was not in her direct care, she explained to a colleague: “I stopped by because I was concerned about the man’s condition.”At about 4 a.m., a paramedic observed that the patient was pale, breathing shallowly, and complaining of pain. The previous day, he was alert.The head nurse discovered that the IV drip had turned brown and photographed the tube before removing it. Moments later, the head nurse noticed that the cup with the contaminated line was missing. When asked, Furukawa said she had taken it to the staff station, but the cup later found there contained a reddish-orange liquid, different from the brown substance originally observed.By the evening of January 30, the patient’s condition worsened and his blood pressure dropped. He died the next night.The hospital considered it an “unusual death” and reported it to the police on 1 February. Police analysis later determined that the substance was likely human feces.When the hospital informed Furukawa about the police investigation about three weeks after the death, she reportedly responded: “Is that so? I think I can’t come back now.” He voluntarily resigned with effect from 24 February.“As an employee of a medical institution and as a human being, this is an absolutely inexcusable act and our hospital strongly condemns it. We also deeply regret that such a situation has arisen despite maintaining standard medical care systems,” the hospital operator said in a statement.