New Orleans' coroner ruling won't end murder case
Source: Reuters
NEW ORLEANS, Feb 1 (Reuters) - The case against a doctor and two nurses accused of murdering four elderly patients after Hurricane Katrina will go forward despite a coroner's ruling that it is unclear how they died, the New Orleans District Attorney's office said on Thursday. The ruling by New Orleans coroner Frank Minyard "means nothing new," Assistant District Attorney Michael Morales told Reuters. Minyard said the causes of death of the elderly patients at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans during the hurricane's aftermath were "undetermined," according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune's Web site on Thursday. "We did everything we were asked to do," Minyard was quoted as saying. "We took toxicology and sent it up to one of the best labs in the country for them to analyze. ... But as we stand now, with all of the consultants we have used in our investigation, the classification is undetermined." Dr. Anna Pou and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry, who were working at the medical center when it was inundated with floodwater, have not been indicted. A grand jury was set to hear testimony this month. Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti issued arrest warrants for the women last July based on evidence he said showed Pou, with help from the nurses, gave lethal injections to the four bed-ridden patients as the hospital was being evacuated. Lawyers for the defendants, arrested on four counts each of principal to second-degree murder, say their clients acted heroically by staying on the job in the harrowing days after Katrina struck the city Aug. 29, 2005. The neighborhood surrounding the hospital suffered some of the worst flooding in the area, after several floodwalls and levees in the city failed.
| AlertNet news is provided by |  |
