File: Nursing home was grim scene
Temps at Hollywood site where 12 died in ’17 shocked paramedics
HOLLYWOOD Paramedics who evacuated dying residents from a sweltering nursing home had never seen patients with temperatures so high, according to arrest documents obtained by the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
And the wife of a patient who survived the post-Hurricane Irma ordeal told investigators she can’t shake the vision of an elderly woman naked from the waist up, bobbing up and down in the “stifling hot” nursing home, complaining that she couldn’t breathe and that she was going to die, the documents show.
After three days without air conditioning, vulnerable, elderly patients at the facility began to die, one after another. By the end of Sept. 13, 2017, eight had died. Four more would die in coming days and weeks.
State prosecutors on Monday announced that they had filed manslaughter charges against the chief administrator and three nurses who worked at the nursing home on the night before patients started dying from heat-related causes.
A 14-page arrest warrant affidavit details how homicide detectives built their case using medical records, surveillance video, cellphones, more than 50 computer hard drives and an estimated 500 sworn statements and interviews from patients’ relatives, staff, police, paramedics and doctors.
The affidavit paints a macabre scene of elderly patients in various stages of respiratory distress
when paramedics arrived. One woman had vomit in her mouth and on her pillow. One man’s eyelids were fused shut. Most were hot to the touch, shiny and sweaty. A 57-year-old woman was suffering from “severe malnutrition” and was “acutely dehydrated.”
Three men were pronounced dead while still in their beds. They weren’t breathing and didn’t have pulses. Lividity — or discoloration of the skin that sets in within 30 minutes after the heart stops beating — was visible, the affidavit said.
Hollywood Fire Rescue was called out in the early morning because an 84-year-old woman was in cardiac arrest. When they got there, Betty Hibbard was unconscious in her bed in the second-floor hallway. Her breathing was shallow and labored, and her skin was pale, moist and hot.
Her temperature registered at 107.5 degrees.
“None of the paramedics had ever seen a patient with a temperature that high,” the affidavit said.
Hibbard was taken to the intensive care unit at Hollywood Memorial Hospital across the street from the nursing home. She died 12 hours later.
The next evacuated patient’s temperature measured 108.3 degrees. The next one’s temperature had soared to 109.9 degrees by the time she was taken to the hospital.
The wife of another resident who survived the ordeal said the vision of Hibbard suffering in the hallway won’t go away, the affidavit said.
Linda Harmon was there to visit her husband on the evening of Sept. 12, 2017 and noticed that even then Hibbard was not doing well, according to the affidavit.
Hibbard was on her bed by the second-floor nurse’s
station. She was naked from the waist up and “bobbing up and down repeating, ‘I can’t breathe, I’m going to die,’” Harmon said, according to the affidavit.
“I still have nightmares of seeing her rocking back and forth,” Harmon said.
She also told investigators she overheard a maintenance man complain to a nurse about Hibbard’s condition “not being right” and ask “why don’t you send her to the hospital.”
The nurse brushed the comment aside, Harmon said.
“Her vitals are fine. She always complains about the heat,” Harmon heard the nurse say, according to the affidavit.
Jorge Carballo, 61, of Miramar, was the nursing home’s chief administrator. He faces nine counts of aggravated manslaughter of an elderly person or disabled adult.
Sergo Colin, 45, of North Miami Beach, was the registered nurse and night shift
nursing supervisor. His and Carballo’s charges are identical.
“Colin’s failure to properly supervise the nursing staff under his watch and his failure to execute his duties and responsibilities as a registered nurse resulted in the deaths of 12 patients under his care and control,” the affidavit said.
Although a dozen people died, state prosecutors found the evidence was insufficient to prove criminal charges beyond a reasonable doubt in the deaths of Carlos Canal, 93, Cecilia Franco, 90, and Martha Murray, 94, records show.
Althia Meggie, 36, of Lauderdale Lakes, was a registered nurse on the night shift. She faces two counts of aggravated manslaughter of an elderly person or disabled adult and two counts of tampering with or fabricating evidence in connection with medical records.
Meggie is accused of making notes on a patient’s medical records after the patient was no longer at the nursing home. She also wrote that the patient was in stable condition when she left with rescuers, which she was not.
Meggie also stands accused of making the exact same notation about another patient.
“It is not reasonably possible for two different patients to have identical vital signs and observation notes,” the affidavit said.
Tamika Miller, 31, licensed practical nurse, faces six counts of aggravated manslaughter of an elderly person or disabled adult, as well as two counts of tampering with or fabricating evidence in connection with medical records.
All four were arrested last month and have been released on bond while awaiting trial.
Defense lawyers for Colin and Meggie on Tuesday filed pleas of not guilty on their clients’ behalves.
An arraignment date has been set for Oct. 2.