A registered nurse, who while working in the Alzheimer unit of a Chapel Hill nursing home drugged her patients, pleaded guilty in Orange County Criminal Superior Court to one count of involuntary manslaughter and six counts of patient abuse, as reported by the Herald Sun.
The nurse, A.A., allegedly medicated the nursing home patients so that she would not be disturbed during her shift.
A.A. will serve a consolidated prison sentence of 16 to 20 months – split into five months of prison time and 30 months of supervised probation by Supreme Court Judge Orlando Hudson.
At the time of A.A.'s sentencing she sat in the courtroom, reduced to tears as family members and friends of the victims recounted how their loved ones were treated, and what the outcome had been for all of them.
A.A. will never be allowed to seek work in the health care field or in a health care facility, as ordered by Hudson, in any capacity.
One of A.A.'s patients, R.H., 84, died at UNC Hospitals of pneumonia brought on by morphine toxicity. Six other Alzheimer patients had to be hospitalized, some for several weeks, due to respiratory complications – again brought on by the morphine A.A. had given them.
According to Orange County Senior Assistant District Attorney Lamar F. Proctor Jr., on February 13, from 3 p.m. until 11 p.m., A.A. was assigned to the Alzheimer unit of the Britthaven Chapel Hill nursing home.
The next day R.H. went into an acute respiratory distress and was taken to UNC hospitals where she tested positive for opiates.
R.H. was not prescribed any opiate drugs.
Of 14 patients in all from the Alzheimer unit that tested positive for opiates only one, according to Proctor, had a prescription for morphine.
The N.C. State Bureau of Investigation learned that other nursing home employees witnesses A.A. handing out orange liquid to patients – and none of the employees recognized it as a medication the patients had been prescribed.
Proctor said, "She made some statements that she didn't want to see the patients that night and she had given them something to relax…She made a statement that she knocked all their asses out."
A friend of one of the victims told reporters, "This was no angel of death. They weren't trying to put someone out of their misery. They weren't trying to quiet somebody who was disruptive." He also said that his friend "was the nicest grandmother type you would ever want to meet."
A.M., R.H.'s daughter, told A.A., "You betrayed the trust of an elderly child-like person who didn't know you were hurting her and didn't know that you were doing things to her that you shouldn't have been doing."
A.M. also asked the judge, "Please fix it where she will not be able to take care of the elderly or anybody in the health care services from this day on."
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