Nurse who killed Finsbury Park woman is struck off

A jealous psychiatric nurse who turned his lover into a ‘zombie’ by dousing her in petrol and setting her alight was struck off last week.

Aiah Tondoneh, 44, is serving life in Belmarsh Prison for the brutal killing of 50-year-old Donna Drepaul.

She had returned home late to her flat in Clifton Court, Biggerstaff Street, Finsbury Park, from a meeting with another man.

She was so severely disfigured that people mistakenly thought she was a white man, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) heard.

The NMC panel ruled that Tondoneh’s fitness to practice was impaired by reason of his conviction.

Striking him off the register, panel chairman Winsome Levy, said: “We have no doubt that the facts of the conviction were extremely grave.

“The horrific nature of the murder means Mr Tondoneh is fundamentally incompatible with remaining on the register.

“If he was not struck off, it would seriously undermine public confidence in the profession.”

During Tondoneh’s Old Bailey trial, jurors heard Ms Drepaul suffered 50-60 per cent burns to her face and upper body and multiple organ failure following the attack on July 2, 2010. She died two days later.

Ms Drepaul, “a well-liked” senior staff nurse at University College Hospital in central London, met Tondoneh while he was employed at Highgate Mental Health Unit in north London.

Tondoneh was married but had been seeing Ms Drepaul for about four years.

At the time of her death, she was trying to end their relationship because of his jealousy.

He was captured on CCTV buying petrol from a local station before he went on to attack Ms Drepaul at her flat.

Tondoneh, of Shoot Up Hill, Cricklewood, who qualified as a mental health nurse in March 1999, did not engage with the NMC process.