New Orleans – A doctor and two nurses who labored at a sweltering, flooded hospital in Hurricane Katrina’s chaotic aftermath were arrested and accused Tuesday of murdering four trapped and desperately ill patients with injections of morphine and sedatives.
“We’re talking about people that pretended that maybe they were God,” Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti said. “And they made that decision.”
The defendants were booked on charges of being “principals to second-degree murder,” which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
The three were the first medical professionals charged in a months-long criminal investigation into whether many of New Orleans’ sick and elderly were abandoned or put out of their misery in the days after the storm.
Dr. Anna Pou, a cancer and ear, nose and throat specialist, and the two nurses were accused of deliberately killing four patients, ages 62 to 90, at Memorial Medical Center with a “lethal cocktail” of morphine and Versed. The patients’ names were not released.
“There may be more arrests and victims that cannot be mentioned at this time,” Foti said. He planned to turn the case over to New Orleans’ district attorney, who will decide whether to ask a grand jury to bring charges.
Memorial Medical had been cut off by flooding after the Aug. 29 hurricane swamped New Orleans. Power was knocked out in the 317-bed hospital, and the temperature inside rose to more than 100 degrees as the staff tried to tend to patients who waited four days to be evacuated.
Overdoses of morphine or Versed can stop the heart and lungs.
Foti, however, said he believed the patients would have lived through the storm’s aftermath. “This is not euthanasia,” he said. “This is homicide.”
According to court papers, tissue samples taken from the dead at Memorial Medical tested positive for morphine and Versed, and the amount of Versed present was found to be higher than the usual therapeutic dose. Medical records reviewed by investigators also showed that none of the four patients were taking either of the drugs as part of their routine care.
Pou’s lawyer, Rick Simmons, said his client is innocent, and her mother said she was distressed by her daughter’s arrest.
“Medicine was the most important thing in her life and I know she never ever did anything deliberately to hurt anyone,” Jeanette Pou said in a telephone interview.
In addition to Pou, nurses Cheri Landry and Lori Budo were arrested. All three were released without bail.
