Nurse Karenjeet Kaur Warburton banned from treating patients for four years after planned assault

A Queensland nurse who was jailed for a horrific planned assault on her ex-lover, a senior Queensland Police Inspector, could be back treating patients in four years.

Queensland nurse Karenjeet Kaur Warburton.

A Queensland nurse who was jailed for conspiring to have a high-level police officer’s penis and tongue cut off, his face burnt with acid, his spine severed and every bone broken, could be back treating patients in four years.

In a decision handed down in March and published on July 10, Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal member Julie Dick found that nurse Karenjeet Kaur Warburton was guilty of professional misconduct over the planned assault on her ex-lover.

Ms Dick states that Warburton “approached a patient whom she viewed might be “up for it”,” to assault the officer, senior Queensland Police Inspector Don McKay.

Her sentencing hearing was told she paid Cairns man Andrew Bown $3000 and directed him to assault Insp McKay, providing him with photographs and his home address between April 1 and October 6, 2021.

Karenjeet Kaur Warburton

“She had paid a significant amount and offered an even more significant amount to the proposed assailant. I have given details of the comments she made about what she wanted done to the complainant. There were unsuccessful attempts. That did not stop her. She used encrypted methods of communication,” Ms Dick wrote.

Warburton gave directions to a law enforcement participant to have McKay’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”, the decision states.

She dated Mr McKay between March 2020 and early 2021.

Cairns man Andrew Bown. Picture: Facebook

In November 2023 Warburton was sentenced in Cairns District Court to five years jail, suspended after serving 16 months, with an operational period of five years.

The operational period will expire on November 7, 2028.

She pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to procure grievous bodily harm and one count of attempting to procure a malicious act with intent.

“The attempts only ceased when the police became involved when she was arrested,” Ms Dick wrote.

Mr Brown was sentenced in November 2022 in the Cairns District Court to three-and-a-half years imprisonment, suspended after six months, on charges of arson, attempting to procure a person to do grievous bodily harm on another person, and having a dangerous thing for another person to commit a crime with.

Originally published as Nurse Karenjeet Kaur Warburton banned from treating patients for four years after planned assault