Updated ,first published
The father of a baby who was left with lifelong brain damage after a hospital gas blunder which also killed another newborn has shared the devastating impact on their “strong girl”, alongside his mixed feelings about the gas fitter’s punishment and level of remorse.
Danial Khan said the former Sydney gas fitter Christopher Turner was “negligent, careless [and] lazy” when he caused serious injuries to his daughter, Amelia, in 2016.
“We’re going to suffer for a very long time,” he said outside court.
Turner sat emotionless as he was jailed for a maximum of nearly three years on Thursday after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of newborn John Ghanem and causing grievous bodily harm by omission to Amelia Khan at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital a decade ago. His supporters held each other as Turner was handcuffed in Downing Centre District Court, with one calling out “I love you dad”.
Due to his 10-month non-parole period, he will be released in December.
Turner fell “so short of expected standards”, a judge ruled, when he failed to complete several tests that would have taken between just seconds and minutes, and would have prevented the tragedies.
The 64-year-old was contracted by BOC Ltd to install and test oxygen and nitrous oxide gas lines in an operating theatre in the hospital in 2015.
He installed the wrong gas, which was released from a wall-mounted panel. The pipelines installed in the hospital in the 1990s were mislabelled in the roof, but Turner failed to test them as required by law and signed documents saying he had checked them.
The fatal mix-up was uncovered a year later, when the two newborns were mistakenly given nitrous oxide instead of oxygen.
Amelia’s exposure occurred in June 2016. She suffered severe brain damage, spent two weeks in intensive care and, to this day, requires constant care.
Judge Nicole Noman said Amelia faced a “diminished lifespan”. She is wheelchair-bound, legally blind and unable to speak.
Less than a month later, on July 13, baby John was mistakenly given the same gas for 50 minutes during an emergency resuscitation immediately after his birth. Noman said he was “much loved during his short life… [his] death has caused significant anguish”.
Hospital staff notified the police. Turner, who lives on the Central Coast, was arrested and charged in 2022; he spent one night in custody before being granted bail. Facing the prospect of 25 years’ jail, he initially defended the charges, but reversed his pleas ahead of a planned trial last year.
Noman said Turner’s crimes, while not intentional, “fell so far short of the standards a reasonable person would expect”, adding that he failed to undertake several tests which “would have prevented the error”.
“It was not that he undertook substandard testing, he failed to test at all,” she said.
Due to the loss of life and such serious injuries, the judge said Turner committed a “high level of harm”.
Speaking to media outside court, Khan said it was sad to see someone of Turner’s age jailed, but that his actions should “serve as an example for anybody else”.
‘We just got an apology letter a week before the trial, so there could have been better ways to show some remorse.’
Danial Khan
“There’s no room for medical negligence in the Australian healthcare system of this calibre, and I hope it never happens again,” he said.
“I hope … everybody always thinks twice before signing off on medical documents”.
Khan said he was unsure if the sentence was “enough”, that he had “not really” gained closure and that he did not know if Turner was remorseful given he had not “reached out to the family” over the past decade.
“I feel like we just got an apology letter a week before the trial, so there could have been better ways to show some remorse,” he said of the letter sent to the court, adding he did not “know what’s going through his mind” and he “can’t imagine what [Turner’s family] are going through”.
“I don’t know how I’ll feel tomorrow but right now, it’s just a ball of mixed emotions,” he said.
Khan described Amelia as a “strong, resilient girl” who is “loved tremendously”.
“She loves learning … She loves reading books, and I truly believe she’ll do amazing things as she gets older,” he said.
Noman criticised the 10-year gap between Turner’s error and completion of proceedings. She acknowledged he expressed “deep remorse” and said he “continued to carry the weight of what he had done”, but that he took several years to admit guilt.
The court heard Turner suffered various medical issues and that full-time custody would cause “financial harm, stress and anxiety” to him and his family, but no other punishment was appropriate.
Media would ordinarily be legally barred from naming child victims of crime, however, both victims’ families gave permission for them to be made public – a decision Noman said would have been difficult.
A 2021 coronial inquest heard pipelines installed in the hospital in the 1990s were mislabelled in the roof, leading to a mix-up during the installation of neonatal resuscitation gas outlets in 2015. But lawyers assisting the coroner said any deficiencies “would have been obvious” if they were adequately tested and signed off.
Turner was convicted and fined $100,000 in 2021 after pleading guilty in the NSW District Court to failing to comply with a health and safety duty.
BOC Ltd was cleared of any charges after a judge found Turner and a hospital employee had both signed forms declaring they had carried out testing following the works, despite having not done so.
The tragedies, and subsequent campaigning from families, led to changes to NSW legislation requiring tradespeople to be licensed specifically for the installation of medical gas.
With Angus Thomson and Sarah McPhee
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