Paramedic accused of using eye drops to kill wife

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A paramedic has been accused of using eye drops to fatally poison his own wife, who he has been married to for eight years.

North Carolina man Joshua Lee Hunsucker, 35, was charged with the first-degree murder of his wife Stacy, as per local paper The Shelby Star last Friday, Dec. 20. Hunsucker was arrested on Dec. 19.

When Stacy died last year, Hunsucker refused to have her body autopsied, according to an affidavit cited in the report. It was Stacy’s wish, however, to be an organ donor, which is why samples of her blood were preserved.

When Stacy’s blood was tested, it turned out to have high levels of tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient found in over-the-counter eye drops.

“We have probable cause he poisoned Mrs. Hunsucker with Visine, which caused her death,” said Jordan Green, an attorney for the fraud investigations unit of the North Carolina Department of Insurance Green.

Visine is a brand of eye drops produced by Johnson and Johnson.

Hunsucker has been under investigation since August after Stacy’s mother, Suzie Robinson, accused his son-in-law of insurance fraud in connection with the suspicious death of the 32-year-old Stacy on Sept. 23, 2018.

Hunsucker received $250,000 (around P12.7 million) from the two life insurances of his wife, as per report. Robinson also alleged Hunsucker of having a girlfriend prior to Stacy’s death, as stated in the affidavit.

Hunsucker’s co-workers at the hospital meanwhile told investigators that Hunsucker seemed “unaffected” by his wife’s death, and that he moved in with another girl just less than six months after.

The affidavit stated that Hunsucker gave multiple versions of how he discovered the body of his dead wife. He told a friend he was out on a walk only to return home to a lifeless Stacy, slumped over and blue on their couch. He meanwhile told Robinson that he was using the computer in their kitchen before he saw his wife’s dead body.

Hunsucker is being held under detention at the Gaston County Jail and is subject to a $1.5 million bond. He has also been fired from the Atrium Health’s MedCenter, which he has been a paramedic for since 2013. Ian Biong/JB

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