AN intensive care nurse deliberately killed a schoolgirl by withdrawing drugs that were keeping her alive, a tribunal was told.

A doctor told how Sister Kathleen Atkinson stopped the supply of adrenaline, which was keeping burns victim Patricia Dryden, 15, alive following an explosion at a house.

He said she was later heard telling a nurse: "She's going to die anyway".

Consultant Dr Steven Cook told an employment tribunal that he was horrified at what Mrs Atkinson had done and she was sacked from her post at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary.

Mrs Atkinson, 52, of Stadium Villas, Wallsend, had worked at the hospital for 18 years. She is claiming unfair dismissal following her sacking after a disciplinary hearing in 1996.

She was later arrested and charged following the deaths of three terminally-ill patients at the hospital in the early 1990s.

Following an investigation all charges were dropped, but Dr Cook told the tribunal yesterday that he still believed Mrs Atkinson was guilty of gross misconduct.

He said: "I had no doubt that after the Crown Prosecution Service declined to carry on with the charges, she unilaterally hastened the deaths of patients.

Miss Dryden, from Blyth, Northumberland, was taken to the Royal Victoria Infirmary suffering from 50 per cent burns following the explosion, which lifted the roof off the building.

Mrs Atkinson was charged in May 1997 with the attempted murder of two patients and incitement to murder a third in the intensive care unit.

The charges were dropped in February 1998, but she spent three months on remand in Durham Prison and said the case has ruined her life.

She was sacked from her £23,000-a-year post in March 1996 for gross misconduct.

The tribunal continues