La. kin suspicious about hospital deaths

NEW ORLEANS - With a doctor and two nurses accused of killing four patients in the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina, there was anger among relatives but little surprise from some who have long considered the deaths of their loved ones to be suspicious.

"I consider the nurses murderers. They were in a bad situation, but they were murderers," Lou Ann Savoie Jacob said Wednesday.

Her 90-year-old mother, Rose Savoie, was among those prosecutors say were killed by Dr. Anna Pou and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry at Memorial Medical Center, where patients and staff were stranded for days without running water or communications after the hurricane overwhelmed New Orleans' levees.

According to court documents released Tuesday by the Attorney General's Office, Budo was seen injecting Savoie with something Sept. 1, three days after Katrina left four-fifths of the city under water. "That burns," the 90-year-old woman allegedly said when she was injected.

The daughter of another patient in the case said her mother, Ireatha Watson, had been very sick, with gangrene in both legs and dementia, but that she had been stable two days before Katrina hit. Watson, 89, had been scheduled to have her legs amputated Aug. 29, the day the hurricane hit.

"I found it strange that she passed away the way she did, and I couldn't get any information," said Paulette Harris, Watson's daughter.

The widow of another victim, 61-year-old Emmett Everett Sr., declined to comment Wednesday. Everett, who was 380 pounds and paralyzed, appeared "conscious, awake and alert" before he was sedated, according to the arrest affidavit in the case.

Pou, Budo and Landry, arrested late Monday, are accused of killing Savoie, Watson, Everett and one other severely ill patient with morphine and a sedative called Versed.

When they were booked, each was accused of being "a principal to second-degree murder," which carries a mandatory life sentence if convicted. Actual charges, however, will be up to the New Orleans district attorney, who had not received the AG's investigation report by Wednesday.

Kris Wartelle, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Charles Foti, said one or two other people may still be arrested in the case, but it's unclear when that might happen.

"It's hard to say. Once you arrest people, people start talking more," she said.

Attorneys for all three arrested say their clients are innocent and provided care for patients long after authorities stranded them with little aid.

"The events (at Memorial) occurred through the total collapse of the Louisiana health care evacuation plan. My client and the hospitals were abandoned by the government, and now the government is going to second-guess them," Pou's attorney Rick Simmons said Wednesday.

Conditions at Memorial deteriorated rapidly in the days after the hurricane. The stranded hoarded vending machine food and workers broke windows to get relief from the stifling triple-digit heat, said Angela McManus, whose 70-year-old mother died in the hospital but was not among the victims listed in the court documents.

"It was nasty and smelly," said McManus, who stayed until she was ordered to evacuate. "People were fighting to get on the heliopad when the helicopters got there. People were just crazy."

The Memorial investigation was part of a sweeping look at more than 240 deaths at five hospitals and 13 nursing homes following Katrina.

More than 40 bodies were recovered from Memorial hospital two weeks after Katrina. Some died of natural causes, but Wartelle said at least nine of the deaths appeared suspicious enough to merit charges. The four listed in the arrest warrant affidavit were the only ones investigators could immediately tie to Pou, Landry and Budo, she said.

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