NEW YORK TIMES: Nurse Is Charged in the Death of 5 Patients

[okarol]

April 3, 2009
Nurse Is Charged in the Death of 5 Patients
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
New York Times

HOUSTON — A nurse has been charged with murdering five patients at a clinic in Lufkin, Tex., by injecting bleach into their veins while they were undergoing kidney dialysis, local authorities said Thursday.

The arrest of the nurse, Kimberly Saenz, 35, this week appeared to resolve the mystery surrounding a spike in deaths and sudden illnesses at the DaVita Dialysis clinic a year ago. State records show 19 people died at the clinic in the five months before Ms. Saenz was fired in late April 2008; that number was well above the state’s average rate.

The police say they have found evidence linking Ms. Saenz to at least five of those deaths, including three on a single day — April 1, 2008. She is also charged with sickening five other patients, who survived despite having doses of bleach added to their intravenous tubes during dialysis. If convicted, Ms. Saenz faces the death penalty.

Company officials say Ms. Saenz was fired on April 29, 2008, after a patient spotted her injecting an unusual fluid into the intravenous tube of another person undergoing dialysis.

A month later, she was arrested on assault charges in connection with patients who had become ill after receiving infusions of bleach. At the time, the police said at least two patients had seen her draw bleach into syringes and inject it into patients. Traces of bleach were also found in syringes and dialysis lines, they said.

On Tuesday, the Angelina County district attorney, Clyde Herrington, convinced a grand jury that the evidence against Ms. Saenz was strong enough to charge her with murder in five deaths. She was arrested Thursday night and was being held in the Angelina County jail without bond. Her lawyer, John Henry Tatum, did not respond to messages left at his office in Lufkin, a town of 40,000 people about 115 miles north of Houston.

DaVita, which operates 1,400 dialysis clinics across the country, maintains there was nothing in Ms. Saenz’s employment history to suggest she was a danger to patients. The company has also said managers at the clinic could not have prevented the attacks.

“This lone individual’s alleged intentional and deceptive acts have caused incredible grief for the victims’ family members,” a spokesman for the company, Richard A. Grenell, said in a statement.

But relatives of some victims said the clinic bore a measure of responsibility for what happened.

“I do feel something horrible was happening at DaVita, and the clinic is guilty of not properly supervising its staff,” John Metcalf was quoted as saying in an interview with The Lufkin Daily News. His mother, Thelma Metcalf, died at the clinic a year ago after being poisoned with bleach.

Ms. Saenz, who lives in the neighboring town of Pollock, worked as a licensed vocational nurse for nearly four years in Texas, according to the State Health Department. She began working at the clinic in the fall of 2007.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/us/03nurse.html?ref=us