Federal prosecutors charged a former Department of Veterans Affairs nursing assistant in West Virginia with seven counts of second-degree murder.
Reta Mays, who worked at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg, is accused of killing seven veteran patients by injecting them with lethal doses of insulin, recently filed court documents show. Mays is also charged with assault with intent to commit murder of an eighth patient at the VA hospital.
Mays was hired by VA in June 2015 and at the time, the Clarksburg VA did not require nursing assistants to have a certification or license. Nursing assistants like Mays were responsible for measuring patient vital signs, documenting patient intake and output, testing patient blood glucose levels and sitting with patients who required close observation.
Nursing assistants at the Clarksburg VA specifically were not "qualified or authorized" to administer any medication, including insulin, according to the court documents.
Mays worked the night shift, 7:30 p.m. to 8 a.m. in the medical-surgical unit of the hospital. That ward of the hospital housed patients who weren't ready to be discharged but didn't require intensive care. At the time, a number of the patients in that ward had diabetes.
In June 2018, three years after Mays was hired, a doctor at the hospital reported to hospital leadership that they were concerned about the deaths of patients who "suffered unexplained hypoglycemic episodes" in the ward where Mays worked, including "the deaths of multiple non-diabetic patients." Hypoglycemia is a condition linked to a surplus of insulin.
The hospital launched an investigation. By July 2018, the hospital had "removed" Mays "from a position of patient care."
Now, she's been charged in seven deaths and one assault with intent to kill, for "willfully, deliberately, maliciously and with malice" administering insulin, the court documents say.
That investigation, followed by outcry from victims' families and civil lawsuits, led to the charges filed Monday.
Mays was scheduled to appear in court for a plea hearing at 2 p.m. Tuesday and the Justice Department was set to hold a press conference at 3 p.m.
The court documents list the names of the seven veterans Mays is accused of killing: Robert Edge Sr., Robert Kozul, Archie Edgell, George Shaw, Felix McDermott, Raymond Golden and one listed only by initials, W.A.H. The eighth patient, who Mays is accused of assaulting with intent to murder, is also listed only by initials, R.R.P.
In each of the cases, Mays is accused of injecting the patients with insulin, leading to hypoglycemia. Four of the veterans were diabetic and four were not. For the four veterans who were diabetic, two were not prescribed any insulin during their hospital stays, but Mays still injected them. The two who were diabetic were injected with too much insulin, court documents said.
The attacks happened between July 2017 and June 2018, according to the court documents.
Previously, a federal grand jury was presented evidence in at least 11 suspicious deaths at the VA hospital.
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