No indictment in Katrina hospital deaths

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No indictment in Katrina hospital deaths
By MARY FOSTER, Associated Press Writer

NEW ORLEANS - A grand jury refused Tuesday to indict a surgeon accused of murdering four seriously ill patients with high doses of painkillers in a putrid hospital in the desperate days after Hurricane Katrina. The decision closes the books on the only criminal mercy-killing case to emerge from the storm.

Dr. Anna Pou and two nurses were arrested last summer after Attorney General Charles Foti's investigation concluded they gave four patients a "lethal cocktail" at Memorial Medical Center amid the chaotic conditions that followed the August 2005 storm.

Foti said the doctor and nurses had determined the patients were too ill to be moved.

Pou has emphatically denied murdering anyone, and lawyers for the three have said they acted heroically by staying to treat patients rather than evacuating.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070724/ap_on_re_us/katrina_hospital_deaths

http://www.emsresponder.com/article/article.jsp?siteSection=1&id=5248

Quote from the news story.

The families of people who died at Memorial in the days after Katrina can still sue Pou.

Assistant Attorney General Julie Cullen, who sat in on the grand jury hearings, said investigators in her office still consider the deaths to be homicides.
Click to expand...

This is still a sad commentary on our legal system and the nation's disaster preparedness or even the understanding of the magnitude of this disaster.
 
Such a grave and sad thing to hear about, for all the parties involved.....-_-
 
When I was in Louisana after Katrina, some of my co-workers did DMORT work in one of the hopsitals... I think it was Memorial, but I'm not sure.

From the conditions they described to me, 2 weeks after the storm... the hospital was a war zone. The first floor still had standing water, and looters had apparently attempted to raid the hospital pharmacy on multiple occasions.

Rumors of providers euthanizing patients were around then... remember... this was a HUGE disaster... there was no power, no A/C, limited staff... IF providers euthanized patients... it would have been after lots of soul-searching, and they would have felt it was the most humane option.
 
Dr. Anna Pou tells her side of the story

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20437669/site/newsweek/page/0/

‘Everybody May Not Make It Out’
Dr. Anna Pou was accused of murdering nine patients in a New Orleans hospital wracked by Katrina, but a grand jury declined to indict her. Now she gives her side of the story.
Bill Haber / AP

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Julie Scelfo
Newsweek
Updated: 6:24 a.m. PT Aug 25, 2007
Aug. 25, 2007 - The tragic deaths at New Orleans’s Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina are among the most notorious examples of the vast human suffering that resulted from the destruction of the levees and the flooding of the city—and the government’s incompetent response to the disaster. At least 34 people died in the hospital awaiting evacuation and it wasn’t long before dark rumors began circulating that some of them were helped along by lethal doses of morphine or other medication. Almost a year after the storm, in July 2006, authorities arrested Dr. Anna Pou, a well-known head and neck surgeon. She was eventually accused of murdering nine patients who were in a long-term acute care unit on the seventh floor run by LifeCare Hospital of New Orleans. (Two nurses were also arrested but their charges were later dropped.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20437669/site/newsweek/page/0/
 
I actually just logged in to see what was said about this.

This is a little different than the hospital case. The hospital wasn't able to evacuate... St. Rita's didn't even try. The owners weren't around, either... they left staff in charge, and had no evacuation plans.

Mandatory evacuation means mandatory evacuation. This is crazy.
 
I think the nursing home people got off on a technicality...
 
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