Ex-nurse charged in 4 hospital deaths
Posted on 07/18/2002 2:42:16 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Ex-nurse charged in 4 hospital deaths
Montague DA calls killings 'serial murder'; other cases possible
07/18/2002
MONTAGUE, Texas - Oma Wyler, 95, was in good spirits on that Sunday in January. After two weeks in Nocona General Hospital, she would soon be released.
"Take me home with you, would you?" she prodded when daughter-in-law Billie Wyler came for a visit. The younger Mrs. Wyler assured her that she soon would.
Two hours later, Oma Wyler, who had been feeling well, was "out of it," her daughter-in-law said. Later that night, Mrs. Wyler who had been recovering from bronchial asthma suddenly died.
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The indictment contends that Vickie Dawn Jackson, 36, injected the patients with mivacurium chloride, a drug used to temporarily stop breathing so a breathing tube can be inserted.
But investigators say the scope of the crime may be wider: Speaking at a news conference Wednesday, District Attorney Tim Cole said as many as 25 patients have been killed or injured through misapplication of the drug at the 38-bed hospital. Most of the victims were elderly, he said, but one was a 14-year-old boy.
The four people named in the indictment "were killed through the same course of conduct," Mr. Cole said. "This is a serial murder."
The indictment says Ms. Jackson, who is being held in the Montague County Jail in lieu of $2 million bail, also is accused of causing the deaths of J.T. Nichols, 80, and Jim Holder, 65, both of Nocona, and E.E. Jackson, 95, of Terrel, Okla.
One of the victims, Mr. Jackson, was the grandfather of Ms. Jackson's estranged husband, according to authorities.
The indictment followed an 18-month investigation into the deaths of 12 patients at the hospital in January and February 2001 after the vials of the drug were reported missing by the hospital. In addition, hospital officials also noticed that the death rates for those months had doubled.
The hospital has cooperated with authorities, including the FBI, Mr. Cole said.
The district attorney said other charges could follow. He has not decided whether he will seek the death penalty or life in prison if Ms. Jackson is convicted.
Authorities are awaiting toxicology reports on the bodies of the remaining six of 10 hospital patients exhumed last year from cemeteries in Texas and Oklahoma. Tissue samples are being analyzed by an FBI laboratory in Washington.
Mr. Cole said that the four patient deaths were attributed to mivacurium chloride.
"The laboratory determined that it was present in the bodies of the victims when there was no medical reason for that to be found," he said.
He declined to discuss any possible motive for the deaths.
Mr. Cole said he does not know whether Ms. Jackson has an attorney in the criminal case. The former vocational nurse, whose license has since been revoked, is expected to arraigned in the next 30 days.
The district attorney said a change of venue may be necessarry in the case because many people in Nocona a town of 3,100 about 45 miles east of Wichita Falls are acquainted with relatives and friends of the victims.
In the meantime, Oma Wyler's family is trying to come to grips with the circumstances of her death on Jan. 24, 2001.
"If the nurse did what they said," Mrs. Wyler said, "she should pay."
She said her mother-in-law was "a stout, old woman. She could have held her own with anybody. She probably could have lived to be 100." She said the mother of six had spent her life as a homemaker.
"Her children meant a lot to her," she said.
Whether those children will join two other families who have filed civil suits against Ms. Jackson and the hospital is undecided, she said.
In response to the suits, the hospital and Ms. Jackson have denied any involvement in the deaths.
Bernadette Pruitt is a Wichita Falls-based free-lance writer.
Would be poetic justice for her to "get the needle."
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