A 64-year-old former gas technician has been sentenced to prison for his role in a catastrophic medical gas installation error at Sydney’s Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital that resulted in one infant’s death and left another with permanent brain damage. Christopher Laurie Turner received a two-year, ten-month sentence in the Downing Centre District Court on Thursday but will be eligible for parole on December 24 after serving just ten months incarceration.
The tragedy stems from July 2015 when Turner incorrectly connected nitrous oxide gas lines to oxygen outlets in the hospital’s neonatal unit during overnight installation work. Despite Australian Standard protocols mandating specific cross-connection tests and gas concentration verification—procedures that would have taken mere minutes—Turner certified completion without performing the required safety checks.
The consequences emerged months later when two separate medical emergencies revealed the lethal error. In June 2016, newborn Amelia Khan sustained catastrophic brain injuries during emergency resuscitation when she received nitrous oxide instead of oxygen. The incident left her legally blind, wheelchair-dependent, and without verbal communication abilities. One month later, infant John Ghanem died within an hour of birth after being ventilated with the misconnected gas system in Operating Theatre Eight.
Court proceedings revealed the installation mistake connected to mislabeled pipeline infrastructure dating to the mid-1990s. Turner initially pleaded not guilty but reversed his position in October, admitting to one count each of manslaughter and causing grievous bodily harm by omission.
Crown prosecutors argued Turner demonstrated ‘gross negligence’ with ‘foreseeable’ devastating outcomes. The sentence concludes a lengthy legal process that began with a 2020 Work Health and Safety Act violation (resulting in a $100,000 fine) and continued through a 2021 coronial inquest before criminal charges were filed in August 2022.
The affected families—Danial and Benish Khan (parents of Amelia) and Youssef and Sonya Ghanem (parents of John)—have endured eight years awaiting judicial resolution of the preventable tragedy that altered their lives irrevocably.