HAWKESBURY, ONT. -- Days after Dr. Brian Nadler was arrested, some of the physician's former patients and their family members are speaking out.
"It’s very eerie for me, it’s actually kind of scary for me," Priscilla Paquette said.
Paquette’s mother Jacqueline was in hospital in Hawkesbury for roughly eight months before she passed away on Feb. 14.
"He was the one taking care of my mother. It just, kind of, I don’t know, there’s something that just really bothers me of that idea," she added.
Paquette says Dr. Nadler was nice in their brief interaction, adding she doesn’t question the level of care her mother received while she was in Hawkesbury and District General Hospital.
"I’m not worried because she was well surrounded there," Paquette said.
Still, she says she’s unsettled knowing Dr. Nadler had access to her mother.
"Not knowing what he has actually done; once that is out that will probably be answers for me," she continued.
Sébastien Fournier was a patient of Dr. Nadler’s in February. He says he didn’t notice anything that made him seem suspicious.
"It was (a) very grateful and professional experience that I had with Dr. Nadler. He was looking at his patients with care, I think," Fournier said.
Ontario Provincial Police say their investigation into multiple suspicious deaths at the Hawkesbury General Hospital is still just beginning, but claim they had strong evidence to lay first-degree murder charges against the 35-year-old Nadler.
"Our investigators had the grounds to definitely lay the first-degree murder charge in one case, but there were signs that made us think we need to look further at other recent deaths at the hospital," Bill Dickson, Acting Manager of Media Relations for the OPP, said.
Dickson couldn’t provide a timeline or specify how many deaths they were investigating. He also did not specify how recent the deaths would be in order to be considered.
"I can’t get into a lot of the evidence, but I can tell you the investigators who were on the scene, they had enough information and evidence presented to them to form the grounds, and take the individual into custody, and later lay the charge of first-degree murder," Dickson added.
Dr. Nadler was remanded into police custody on Friday. He’ll make his next court appearance on April 6.
Hawkesbury is about 110 kilometres east of Ottawa, near the border with Quebec.