A Colorado plastic surgeon on Wednesday was found not guilty of the most serious charges he faced in a teenage patient’s death, but was convicted on less serious counts after a week-long jury trial in Arapahoe County District Court.
Jurors found Dr. Geoffrey Kim not guilty of negligent homicide in the death of 19-year-old patient Emmalyn Nguyen, but found him guilty of attempted reckless manslaughter and guilty of obstructing a telephone after he failed to call for help for hours after Nguyen suffered cardiac arrest.
Attempted reckless homicide is a Class 5 felony in Colorado, which is typically punishable by between one and three years in prison. Obstructing a telephone is a misdemeanor. Kim is set to be sentenced on Sept. 8.
Nguyen went to Kim for breast augmentation surgery in August 2019, when she was 18, but she suffered cardiac arrest after receiving anesthesia, fell into a coma and died 14 months later, in October 2020.
Prosecutors argued that Kim caused the Brighton teenager’s death when he failed to call for help for five hours after her cardiac arrest, even though she needed immediate care at a hospital, which was better equipped than Kim’s outpatient surgery center, Colorado Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery in Greenwood Village.
His defense attorneys argued during the jury trial that a nurse was actually to blame for Nguyen’s death. They said that anesthetist Rex Meeker gave the girl a mix of dangerous drugs before her surgery and a much-too-large dose of fentanyl that together stopped her heart.
Meeker was originally also criminally charged in connection with Nguyen’s death, but prosecutors dropped the charges against him in September. He was expected to testify for the prosecution during the jury trial.
Kim’s defense attorneys did not return requests for comment Wednesday. Gary Dawson, chief deputy district attorney with the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s office, said Nguyen might have lived if Kim had more quickly called for help.
“We understand medical procedures don’t always go as planned, but this defendant showed a shocking and extreme lack of judgment and humanity by failing to call for an ambulance and denying his patient appropriate treatment in a hospital setting,” Dawson said in a statement. “…This defendant made decisions based on what was best for his business, and not for his patient.”
Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.
