An immigrant nurse who was jailed for one year and four months for trying to have her senior police officer ex-boyfriend maimed and mutilated so he could “never walk or talk again” has been banned from practicing for just four years.
Karenjeet Kaur Warburton, 52, paid a patient, Cairns man Andrew Bown, $3,000 in 2021 to assault Queensland Police Inspector Don McKay, telling him she wanted McKay’s “dick cut off and tongue cut out”, his house burned down, and his face disfigured with acid.
Bown attempted to injure the police officer numerous times, and recruited another man who set McKay’s house on fire with lighter fluid and caused $20,000 worth of damage, but was sentenced to 3.5 years’ jail, suspended after six months, after a court heard he had a “misguided emotional attachment” to the nurse.
Warburton, a Malaysian-born Indian, then discussed having McKay’s spine severed with an undercover police officer, and in 2023 pleaded guilty to one count of “attempting to procure grievous bodily harm” and one count of “attempting to procure a malicious act with intent”, both domestic violence offences.
In November 2023 Cairns District Court Judge Joshua Trevino found her actions were “cold and calculated” but decided she was a low risk of reoffending and had her “rehabilitation in hand” in sentencing her to five years’ jail suspended after 16 months, Cairns Post reported at the time.
On July 10 the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal published a decision handed down in March that found Warburton guilty of professional misconduct over the planned attacks, cancelled her registration as a nurse and disqualified her from re-applying for four years.
“[Warburton] hired and paid two third parties to grievously injure her ex-partner. This was ultimately unsuccessful in causing him any physical harm due to either the ineptitude or the lack of enthusiasm on behalf of the proposed assailants to act on her instructions,” Judicial Member Julie Dick SC wrote.
“That circumstance, including the nature of the directions given to those two people to have the complainant’s penis and tongue cut off, his face burnt with acid, his spine to be severed with a knife for the purpose of causing paralysis, or to break every bone in his body so that he could no longer walk or talk, means that it would be not open to the Tribunal on any reasonable view of those facts to find that her behaviour was anything other than professional misconduct, and she does not argue that it should be so.”
Ms Dick said the tribunal had difficulty accepting Warburton’s claims that abuse of alcohol was a significant factor in her crimes, and noted that her offences were “persistent” and occurred over a long period of time.
“She had paid a significant amount and offered an even more significant amount to the proposed assailant … There were unsuccessful attempts. That did not stop her. She used encrypted methods of communication,” Ms Dick wrote.
“That is not something one does when suffering from drunkenness. The attempts only ceased when the police became involved when she was arrested. These matters demonstrate that her conduct was entirely out of kilter with her profession as a nurse.
“There has been some discussion about the fact that although it did not happen during her practice, she in fact approached a patient whom she viewed might be ‘up for it’.”
Warburton’s sentencing hearing was told she had studied nursing in the UK before moving to Australia with her ex-husband in 2007, then began drinking to excess after her divorce and a series of life tragedies, including the deaths of her sister in Germany and her pets.
Header image: Left, Karenjeet Kaur Warburton (Facebook). Right, Don McKay (QPS).
