NEW ORLEANS – A grand jury refused on Tuesday to indict a doctor accused of murdering four seriously ill hospital patients with drug injections during the desperate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Dr. Anna Pou acknowledged administering medication to the patients but insisted she did so only to relieve pain.
Pou (pronounced “Poe”) and two nurses were arrested last summer after Attorney General Charles Foti concluded they gave “lethal cocktails” to four patients at the flooded-out, sweltering Memorial Medical Center after the August 2005 storm. He released reports from four medical experts who determined the deaths were homicides.
Charges against Lori Budo and Cheri Landry were dropped after they were compelled to testify last month under legal guidelines that kept their testimony from being used against them.
When the levees broke in New Orleans, the lower level of Memorial Medical Center was under 10 feet of water and electricity was out. Inside the hospital, the temperature topped 100 degrees.
At least 34 people died at the hospital, many from dehydration during the four-day wait for rescuers. Other doctors who were there described the situation as resembling a MASH unit during wartime rather than an urban American hospital.
The four patients Pou was accused of killing ranged in age from 61 to 90. Foti said all four would have survived if they had not been given morphine and midazolam hydrochloride.
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