Testimony, tears mark NECC trial
Bitter, tearful testimony by children and health care providers who lost parents and patients to mold-infected medication compounded by a former Framingham drug manufacturer gave federal prosecutors one of their most powerful days yet in the rare medical murder case.
“This is the 21st century. It’s just hard to understand how this could happen in America,” Dr. Kiumarce Kashi of Maryland, his eyes red from crying, said outside U.S. District Court in Boston of the fungal meningitis outbreak that claimed his father Bahman Kashi, 85, in January 2013.
New England Compounding Center CEO Barry Cadden is facing 25 counts of second-degree murder while his defense team seeks to stop close to 20 other grieving families from following Kashi on the witness stand in coming days.
Kashi returns to the stand this morning. He told jurors yesterday his late dad, “a career diplomat” from Iran whose 59-year marriage produced four children, “was a kind and gentle man. He was my son’s buddy and best friend.”
Bahman Kashi survived two spinal surgeries before receiving a fatal NECC steroid injection at the Abington, Md., clinic of Dr. Ritu Bhambhani.
Bhambhani was nearly unconsolable yesterday as she testified to losing Kashi and two other patients, in addition to 13 more being sickened in the fall of 2012 and winter of 2013.
NECC alerted her on Sept. 27, 2012, that it was voluntarily recalling vials of methylprednisolone acetate because another physician had spotted gray material floating in the same medication.
Bhambani had already quarantined the medication in the wake of one patient’s Sept. 16 death and a second patient’s sickness. Unaware, however, that there was a larger problem, she had also reordered. The replacement meds were never used.
“A steroid causing a problem — a contaminate — was not something I was thinking of,” Bhambhani testified. NECC’s recall “was the first hint I’d received that there may be an explanation for what was going on.”
As Bhambhani testified, Cadden, 50, stared straight ahead. She described calling him for answers.
“He said, ‘Oh, it’s nothing to be concerned about ... We’re just being overly cautious,’” Bhambhani said. “I asked multiple times if they were having any patient problems reported and the answer was no.”
Patricia Martin of Nashville, Tenn., whose mother was one of 64 patients who died, later comforted Bhambhani in the courthouse lobby. “I told her it wasn’t her fault,” Martin said.