New Hampshire – A former New Hampshire hospital technician who caused dozens of people to become infected with hepatitis C when he injected himself with syringes of pain killers that were then used on patients was sentenced to 39 years in prison on Monday, December 2.

David Kwiatkowski, 34, admitted in August to stealing the drugs and leaving used syringes for hospital use for years despite knowing he was infected with hepatitis C, a potentially fatal virus that attacks the liver.

He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante in Concord, New Hampshire, after pleading guilty to obtaining controlled substances by fraud and tampering with a consumer product. The judge said his actions verged on “cruelty.”

Kwiatkowski worked as a traveling medical technician in at least eight states for nearly a decade before he was arrested last year following a rash of unexplained hepatitis C cases at Exeter Hospital in New Hampshire.

He told authorities he had injected himself with syringes of the painkiller fentanyl stolen from hospital supply cabinets, causing the syringes to become tainted by his infected blood, and then filled the syringes with saline solution to make it appear they had not yet been used.

Hospital staff then injected patients with the needles, unaware they had been contaminated.

So far some 45 people have been confirmed infected, including 32 in New Hampshire, six in Kansas and seven in Maryland, prosecutors said. Kwiatkowski admitted he used syringes to obtain fentanyl at least 20 times in Kansas, 30 times in Georgia and about 50 times at Exeter Hospital.

He said he had been aware he had hepatitis C and that he was “going to kill a lot of people out of this,” according to court documents. Prosecutors said he learned of his diagnosis in June 2010 while working at Hays Medical Center in Kansas.