posted July 18, 2006 10:25 AM              

Correction: It was one doctor and two nurses who were charged in the killings. Sorry just having my first cup of coffee this morning.

Hospital Staff Charged With Killing Patients After Katrina
Attorney General To Hold News Conference

POSTED: 7:30 am EDT July 18, 2006
UPDATED: 9:25 am EDT July 18, 2006

Were some hospital patients put to death after Hurricane Katrina?

After a long investigation, the Louisiana State Attorney General's Office said a doctor and two nurses have been arrested in connection with the alleged killing of patients at a New Orleans hospital during Hurricane Katrina.

According to Kris Wartelle, a spokeswoman for the Office of Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, the doctor and two nurses have been charged with second-degree murder.

The hospital -- Memorial Medical Center -- was cut off by floodwater after the storm hit. Power went out, and the temperature inside rose past 100 degrees, as patients waited four days to be evacuated.

During that time, at least 34 patients died there. Ten were patients of the hospital's owner, and the others were in a facility run by a separate company.

The charges will be formally announced at a 2 p.m. CDT news conference by Foti in Baton Rouge, La. CNN reported that the staff are accused of killing some of the patients so that the nurses and doctors could evacuate more quickly -- meaning the alleged slayings were not mercy killings at all.

Shortly after Katrina, Foti issued subpoenas for 73 employees who were in Memorial Medical Center during and after the storm. The subpoenas came after continuing rumors of mercy killings -- workers killing patients they thought would not make it and were suffering.

A coroner said several months ago that samples were taken from dozens of patients who died at various hospitals and nursing homes, to test for potentially lethal doses of drugs such as morphine.

Previously, Orleans Parish coroner Frank Minyard told CNN that investigators told him they think some medical staff killed patients. "They thought someone was going around injecting people with some sort of lethal medication," Minyard said.

A nursing manager said that none of the hospital staff knew when rescuers would arrive and that the conditions at the hospital were miserable.

"It was battle conditions," Fran Butler told CNN. "It was as bad as being out in the field."

She said the staff was desperate.

"My nurses wanted to know what was the plan? Did they say to put people out of their misery? Yes. ... They wanted to know how to get them out of their misery," she said to CNN.

Butler also told CNN that a doctor discussed the subject of euthanizing patients, saying that she “was totally against it and wouldn't do it."

Dr. Bryant King, who was working at Memorial during Katrina, told CNN that although he didn’t personally witness any killings, "most people know something happened that shouldn't have happened."

King said that one of the doctors who opposed euthanasia told him that a third doctor said she would be willing to "do it."

He said then, the floor where he was working was cleared of everyone except patients, a hospital administrator and two doctors -- doctors he said had first raised the issue of "mercy killing."

After a prayer, one of the doctors then produced a handful of syringes, King told CNN.

"I don't know what's in the syringes. ... The only thing I heard the physician say was, 'I'm going to give you something to make you feel better,' " King said.

"I don't know what the physician was going to give them, but we hadn't been given medications like that, to make people feel better, or any sort of palliative care," he said. "We hadn't been doing that up to this point."

After deciding he did not want to take part in what he thought was going to happen, King said he grabbed his bag, boarded a boat and left a hospital. He said he doesn’t know what happened after he left.

"Help Please" sign on window of Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans where more than 40 bodies were recovered after Hurricane Katrina

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