Florida nursing home workers charged in 2017 post-hurricane deaths

Four Miami-area nursing home workers were arrested on Monday to face criminal charges in the deaths of a dozen nursing home patients exposed to sweltering heat during a post-hurricane power outage two years ago, defence attorneys said.

Three employees of the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills — administrator Jorge Carballo, the charge nurse who was on duty, Sergo Collin, and nurse Althia Meggie — turned themselves in at the Broward County Jail in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at about noon local time, lawyers said.

A fourth defendant, also a nurse, was taken into custody by police in Miami, according to the lawyers, David Frankel and Lawrence Hashish.

Carballo and Collin were each being booked on 12 counts of manslaughter, Frankel told Reuters. Meggie, a contract nurse at the facility, was being booked on two counts of aggravated manslaughter and two counts of tampering with evidence, according to documents seen by Reuters.

It was not immediately clear what charges the fourth defendant faced.

Arrest warrants for all four defendants were issued over the weekend in the case, which the Broward County coroner has ruled a homicide, lawyers said. They were expected to make their initial court appearances on Tuesday for a bond hearing.

Defence lawyers said their clients were innocent of criminal wrongdoing, and that the victims, who were already in frail health, died under extreme circumstances beyond anyone's control in a natural disaster. Frankel said most of the dead had been under hospice care.

"I believe these charges are meritless, and it's outrageous for them to charge these individuals, the night shift, with manslaughter," Hashish said.

"The real crime is that the state is looking to blame selfless care givers," said Hilham Soffan, an attorney for the contract nurse.

The 12 victims in the case, ranging in age from 57 to 99, were found to have died from heat-related causes after being left with little or no air-conditioning in the nursing home for days after Hurricane Irma knocked out electricity to the facility in September 2017.

The deaths stirred an outcry and raised concern about the vulnerability of Florida's large elderly population in the event of power outages after a storm.

Hollywood police declined to release details of the case, but said Chief Chris O'Brien and other law enforcement officials would announce the charges on Tuesday at 10 a.m. ET.

Deadly heat

The nursing home deaths have been the subject of a criminal investigation since they were first reported in the immediate aftermath of Irma, which killed more than 80 people in the Caribbean and on the U.S. mainland.

City officials said the rehab centre continued to operate with little or no air conditioning after the storm knocked out its electricity and daytime temperatures in the Miami area rose to 32 C.

Nursing home managers placed eight portable air coolers throughout the building and fans in hallways, state authorities said.

The facility was evacuated — in an operation that medical workers later described as chaotic — when four residents were found dead three days after the storm made landfall.

Four more died at or en route to a nearby hospital, and four others ultimately succumbed to the effects of heat exposure, bringing the death toll to 12.

More than 100 patients ended up being evacuated to the hospital, where most were treated for respiratory distress, dehydration and other heat-related ailments, hospital officials said at the time.

Patients taken to the hospital had temperatures ranging from 41.7 to 43.3 C, the agency said. Average normal human body temperature is 37 C.

Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration suspended the facility's license after determining that medical personnel had delayed in calling for emergency assistance when temperatures inside reached excessive levels.