7/24/07 NO CHARGES FOR DOCTOR IN KATRINA HOSPITAL DEATHS

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No charges for doctor in Katrina hospital deaths

Story Highlights
A grand jury declines to indict Dr. Anna Pou

Pou was accused of killing four patients in the chaos after Hurricane Katrina

Two nurses arrested in same case had charges dropped earlier

Attorneys for the three say they worked heroically to save patients


     
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- The doctor at the center of an investigation into four patients' deaths after Hurricane Katrina said everyone must remember the "magnitude of human suffering" after the storm to assure that no health care worker is ever "falsely accused in a rush to judgment."

 
Dr. Anna Pou said Tuesday she hopes to return to work "doing what she loves to do best."

 1 of 2  "Today's events are not a triumph, but a moment of remembrance for those who lost their lives in the storm and a tribute to all of those who stayed at their posts and served people most in need," Dr. Anna Pou said after a grand jury decided Tuesday not to pursue criminal charges against her.

Pou and two nurses -- Cheri Landry and Lori Budo -- were arrested in July 2006 after a 10-month investigation into the deaths at New Orleans' Memorial Medical Center.

Pou's lawyer, Rick Simmons, said she and her patients were "abandoned" by all levels of government.

"The certificates of death in these individual patients should read 'abandoned by their government.' That's what happened here," he said.

Pou said she hopes to return to work "doing what she loves to do best."

She fought back tears as she thanked those who have stood by her during the past 23 "challenging and painful" months.

Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti charged the trio with second-degree murder.

The charges against Landry and Budo were recently dropped.  Watch what led up to grand jury's decision »

Pou, Landry and Budo denied the charges, and their attorneys have said they acted heroically, staying to treat patients rather than evacuate.

The investigation concluded that four patients, ages 63 to 93, were given a "lethal cocktail" of morphine and midazolam hydrochloride, both central nervous system depressants, Foti said.

None of the patients had been prescribed the drugs by their caregivers, and none of the accused treated the four before the injections, Foti said.

"This was not euthanasia," Foti said at a news conference last summer. "This was homicide."

Foti said he turned his findings over to Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan, who was required by law either to file charges or reject the case.

Instead, Jordan impaneled a grand jury, and vowed to let it decide what charges, if any, should be sought. Jordan also directed New Orleans Coroner Frank Minyard to hire outside forensic experts to review the case.


CNN first reported the allegations of euthanasia months after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast and triggered flooding in New Orleans two years ago.

Patients, staff and their families rode out Katrina. But four days after the hurricane hit, despair was setting in. The hospital was surrounded by floodwater. There was no power or water, and the heat was stifling. Food was running low. Nurses were forced to fan patients by hand.

[LouiseVargas]

Thank God.

I always felt all the doctors, nurses and other medical workers were ethical in their decisions to mercifully euthanize the elderly patients who had no chance of survival re Katrina.

My greatest death fear in is to die by drowning. I was sent to swimming lessons but a boy pushed me into the deep end, over my head. I can't stand water over my head. Another time I just drifted towards the deep end and also was in over my head. Since my mother paid them, they got me across the pool for the graduation ceremony.  

Just imagine those old people on life support who would slowly be engulfed in water creeping up upon then ... first the ears, I guess. By natural instinct they would try to breathe but all they would inhale would be water and emit bubbly sounds from their lungs.