BOSTON — Two former leaders of a Massachusetts home for aging veterans where nearly 80 people sickened by the coronavirus died have been criminally charged for their handling of the outbreak, the state’s attorney general said Friday.
Former Holyoke Soldiers’ Home Superintendent Bennett Walsh and former Medical Director David Clinton were indicted by a grand jury, Attorney General Maura Healey told reporters. Each is charged with 10 counts — five counts of criminal neglect five counts of serious bodily injury.
“We believe this is the first criminal case in the country brought against those involved in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Healey said.
The charges come three months after a scathing independent report said that “utterly baffling” decisions made by Walsh and other administrators allowed the virus to spread there unchecked. The “worst decision” was to combine two locked dementia units, both of which already housed some residents with the virus, said investigators led by former federal prosecutor Mark Pearlstein.
Since March 1, 76 veterans who contracted COVID-19 at the home have died, officials said. The first veteran tested positive March 17. Even though he had shown symptoms for weeks, staff “did nothing to isolate” him until his test came back positive, allowing him to remain with three roommates, wander the unit and spend time in a common room, investigators found.
When a social worker raised concerns about combining the two dementia units, the chief nursing officer said “it didn’t matter because (the veterans) were all exposed anyway and there was not enough staff to cover both units,” investigators said. One staffer who helped move the dementia patients told investigators she felt like she was “walking (the veterans) to their death.” A nurse said the packed dementia unit looked “like a battlefield tent where the cots are all next to each other.”
As the virus took hold, leadership shifted from trying to prevent its spread, “to preparing for the deaths of scores of residents,” the report said. On the day the veterans were moved, more than a dozen additional body bags were sent to the combined dementia unit, investigators said. The next day, a refrigerated truck to hold bodies that wouldn’t fit in the home’s morgue arrived, the report said.
A phone message was left Friday with a lawyer for Walsh. It was not immediately clear whether Clinton had an attorney.
Walsh had defended his response, saying state officials initially refused in March to send National Guard aid even as the home was dealing with dire staffing shortages
Walsh was placed on administrative leave March 30 and the CEO of Western Massachusetts Hospital, Val Liptak, took over operations. Walsh was fired after the release of the report but a judge invalidated his termination this week after his lawyer argued that only the home’s board of trustees can hire and fire the superintendent.
The Massachusetts U.S. attorney’s office and U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division are also investigating whether officials violated residents’ rights by failing to provide them proper medical care.
Attorneys general in other states, including Pennsylvania, have also launched investigations into coronavirus deaths at nursing homes. And earlier this month, federal agents searched two nursing homes near Pittsburgh, one of which had the worst coronavirus outbreak of any nursing home in Pennsylvania.
Justice Department officials sent letters to the governors of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan last month seeking data on whether they violated federal law by ordering public nursing homes to accept recovering COVID-19 patients from hospitals.
The letters, sent from the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said the agency was seeking the information to determine whether the orders “may have resulted in the deaths of thousands of elderly nursing home residents.”
The Justice Department said it was evaluating whether to initiate investigations under a federal law known as the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, which protects the rights of people in nursing homes and other facilities. But the law applies only to nursing homes owned or run by the states.
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