Between July 2017 and June 2018, seven veterans at the Louis A. Johnson Veterans Affairs Medical Center died from severe hypoglycemia or extremely low blood sugar. It wasn’t until June 2018 that a medical doctor reported concerns, noting that several of the patients who had died were not diabetic.
A nursing assistant, Reta Mays, was removed from the facility’s Ward 3A after the concerns were raised, CNN reported. On Tuesday, Mays pleaded guilty to eight felonies in federal court, including seven counts of second-degree murder and “one count of assault with intent to commit murder.”
The plea, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia and obtained by CNN, stated that Mays began working at the Clarksburg, West Virginia, hospital in June 2015 and “was responsible for measuring patients’ vital signs, documenting patients’ intake and output, testing patients’ blood glucose levels with a glucometer, and sitting one on one with patients who required close observation.” Mays, however, was “not qualified [nor] authorized to administer medication, including insulin.”
The patients who died under Mays’ care were not close to death and were not in the intensive care unit, CNN reported. An internal investigation was launched, leading to a referral for a criminal investigation.
“Immediately upon discovering these serious allegations, Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center leadership brought them to the attention of the VA’s inspector general while putting safeguards in place to ensure the safety of each and every one of our patients,” a spokesperson for the medical center said at the time.
In a statement released Tuesday, the VA Office of the Inspector General called the murders “tragic and heartbreaking,” according to CNN.
“This case is particularly shocking because these deaths were at the hands of a nursing assistant who was entrusted with providing compassionate and supportive care to veterans. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims,” the IG statement said. “Within a matter of days of learning of the suspicious deaths at the facility, VA OIG agents identified the defendant as a person of interest. Working with medical facility leaders, the defendant was immediately removed from patient care. Without critical investigative actions being taken so expeditiously, additional lives could have been lost.”
The plea states that Mays “willfully, deliberately, maliciously, and with malice aforethought,” killed the seven veterans. A total of 11 deaths at the facility were investigated, with Mays admitting to committing seven of them.
The suspicious deaths weren’t reported until August 2019, when the death of Felix Kirk McDermott, 82, came to light. McDermott’s body was exhumed in October 2018 and a medical examiner determined he died due to an injection of insulin even though he was not diabetic. Felix’s death is one of those Mays pleaded guilty to committing.