Doctors ‘killed’ Diego Maradona

PROBE: SOCCER LEGEND ABANDONED, SAYS LAWYER

Seven people are under investigation for manslaughter as a result of negligence.

Alawyer for a nurse under investigation in the death of Argentine football great Diego Maradona said doctors killed him through negligence.

“They killed Diego,” said attorney Rodolfo Baque after his client, nurse Dahiana Gisela Madrid, was questioned by prosecutors.

Maradona died of a heart attack last November at the age of 60, weeks after undergoing brain surgery for a blood clot.

Madrid, 36, is one of seven people under investigation for manslaughter after a board of experts looking into Maradona’s death found he had received inadequate care and was abandoned to his fate for a “prolonged, agonising period”.

Baque insisted it was the doctors treating Maradona while he recovered from the brain operation, not his client, who were to blame for the soccer legend’s death.

He said Maradona was being treated for heart trouble but at the same time was on psychiatric medication that sped up his heart rate.

Also, Maradona fell while in the hospital, and when Madrid asked to have a CAT scan done on him, an aide to Maradona refused, arguing that if the press found out it would look bad, Baque said.

“In the end, there were many warning signs that Maradona was going to die, give or take a day. And none of the doctors did anything to prevent it,” Baque said during a break in the interrogation of Madrid, which went on for more than eight hours.

Madrid was Maradona’s daytime nurse and one of the last people to see him alive.

An investigation was opened following a complaint filed by two of Maradona’s five children against neurosurgeon Leopoldo Luque, whom they blame for their father’s deteriorating condition after the brain operation.

A panel of 20 medical experts convened by Argentina’s public prosecutor said last month that Maradona’s treatment was rife with “deficiencies and irregularities” and the medical team had left his survival “to fate”.

If found guilty, the seven could face between eight and 25 years in prison. – AFP