“This is a person who due to what she had been going through for so long, was at the end of her tether. She simply just couldn’t go any further.”
The court was shown a text message Wendy sent just before midnight on January 12, 2021, in which she described having been awoken by Kenneth “talking nonsense”, refusing to get into bed, and having emptied the contents of the refrigerator.
“He has pulled out a box under the bed and stuff is everywhere,” she wrote.
“I honestly could kill him. I won’t, of course.
“Give me a 12-hour night shift with no sleep rather than this.”
The court was told after Kenneth’s admission to Joondalup Health Campus, Sym had requested no observations or medical intervention be conducted on her husband while she was gone from his side, before CCTV captured her leaving the hospital at 1.45pm on January 15, 2021.
The alarm was raised when a nurse who went to conduct an ECG on Kenneth later that afternoon couldn’t wake him and could smell insulin.
But that alarm was not an emergency warning because the court was told Sym had signed a “do not resuscitate” order just hours earlier.
The court was told the nurse, who became suspicious of Sym, followed her into the toilets after she returned to the hospital and uncovered an insulin vial dated April 9, 2018 – and allegedly containing Wendy’s DNA – in a waste bin.
That type of insulin was not stocked at Joondalup Health Campus but was used at Princess Margaret Hospital (now Perth Children’s Hospital), where Sym had worked in 2018.
Sym’s DNA was also allegedly found on a syringe with traces of insulin found in a sharps’ container alongside Kenneth’s bed.
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In a police interview on January 20, 2021, Sym denied Kenneth required insulin, denied asking nursing staff to leave him alone, and said she did not recall going to the toilet.
She also insisted that despite his worsening condition, she wasn’t finding it difficult to care for Kenneth.
Justice Forrester said she could not accept that Sym administered the insulin to get Kenneth help, “however you did it out of self turmoil”, she said.
“You were exhausted and staring at the prospect of this continuing in the future,” she said.
“In that state you decided to end his life.”
She sentenced Sym to nine years in prison backdated to her initial date of entering custody in March this year and deemed her eligible for parole after seven years.
Sym fell to the floor as her sentence was read out and a packed gallery of friends and family gasped and heckled police.
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