Allen is late for prison
Former surgical technologist Rocky Allen has been arrested after visiting family when he was supposed to report to a federal Oregon prison to begin a sentence for stealing powerful painkillers from Swedish Medical Center in Englewood.
U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore ordered Allen’s arrest Monday after it was learned that Allen did not show up to the Federal Correctional Institution in Sheridan, Ore., on Nov. 23 as planned, according to a federal court record.
“Instead of him going to FCI-Sheridan in Oregon, he went to Idaho in direct contradiction to the court order,” Jeffrey Dorschner, spokesman for Acting U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer, said Monday.
Allen will be brought back to Denver to face “some consequence” for that, he said.
Allen pleaded guilty in July to a two-count drug theft indictment related to his theft of a syringe in January while on the job at Swedish. Moore sentenced him on Nov. 7 to 6 ½ years in prison and denied his request to visit his family in Idaho before beginning his sentence, Dorschner said.
Allen was to stay at a Colorado halfway house until reporting to prison to begin serving his sentence. But he called his probation officer, Seth Junker, and arranged to report early to the prison.
“In disobedience of and resistance to the court’s order and ruling of Nov. 7, 2016, defendant traveled to Idaho to visit and spend time with his family,” the court document says.
Junker called the prison Dec. 2 and learned Allen had never arrived. He then called Allen, who said he was at his sister’s house in Idaho visiting family, court records say.
Allen was court-martialed in 2011 while enlisted in the Navy and stationed at a hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan, after he admitted to stealing vials of fentanyl. He was fired from at least five health care facilities in California, Arizona and Washington before Swedish hired him in August 2015.
Swedish fired him after he was caught swapping out a saline syringe to steal a fentanyl syringe. Hundreds of patients were tested for possible contamination.