PROSECUTOR: PHARMACIST THOUGHT VACCINE UNSAFE
Hospital employee admits to tampering with vials, police say
A pharmacist who was arrested on charges that he intentionally sabotaged more than 500 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine at a Wisconsin hospital was “an admitted conspiracy theorist” who believed the vaccine could harm people and “change their DNA,” according to the police in Grafton, Wis., where the man was employed.
The police said Steven Brandenburg, 46, who worked the night shift at the Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, had twice removed a box of vials of the Moderna vaccine from the refrigerator for periods of 12 hours, rendering them “useless.”
“Brandenburg admitted to doing this intentionally, knowing that it would diminish the effects of the vaccine,” the police said.
The attempt to destroy precious doses of the vaccine came over the holidays as the state worked to administer vaccines quickly to front-line health care workers. As of Saturday, the state had received 159,800 doses of vaccines and had administered 64,657, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although the Moderna product is sometimes described as a “genetic” vaccine, it does not alter a person’s genes.
The vials, which contained 570 doses of vaccine and which prosecutors said were worth between $8,000 and $12,000, were discovered sitting out on Dec. 26. Five days later, Brandenburg was arrested on felony charges of reckless endangerment and property damage, though prosecutors Monday said the charges could be dropped to a single misdemeanor if the vials, which have yet to be tested, are still usable.
The prosecutor, Adam Gerol, said that Brandenburg was “pretty cooperative and admitted to everything he’d done,” and that “he expressed that he was under great stress because of marital problems.” He said that according to coworkers, Brandenburg had brought a gun to work on two prior occasions.
Last month Brandenburg told his wife, who is in the process of divorcing him, that “the world is crashing down around us,” according to a motion she filed last week asking for sole custody of the couple’s two daughters, 4 and 6, after she learned he was under investigation in the incident at the hospital. She said she feared his reaction if he lost his job.
In her motion, Gretchen Brandenburg said that on Dec. 6, her husband picked up the children and dropped off a water purifier, a large bucket of powdered milk and two 30day emergency buckets of food.
“He told me that if I didn’t understand by now that he is right and that the world is crashing down around us, I am in serious denial,” she said in an affidavit. “He continued to say that the government is planning cyberattacks and plans to shut down the power grid.”
She asked that his time with their children be supervised, saying he had made alarming remarks. In an order signed Monday, the family court granted temporary sole custody to Gretchen Brandenburg, finding that the children were in “imminent danger of physical or emotional harm.”
But the criminal court granted Steven Brandenburg release on a promise to pay $10,000 if he did not show up for his next hearing, on Jan. 19. He was ordered to surrender any firearms; the prosecutor said the police had already confiscated some of his guns.
The Moderna vaccine must be kept frozen or refrigerated until it is used, though it does not require subarctic temperatures like the Pfizer vaccine does. The hospital has said that 57 people received injections of the compromised vaccine, but that Moderna had reassured officials that they would not harm the individuals who received them.