Doctor ‘poisoned patients by injecting toxic drugs in IV bags’
A doctor has been found guilty of poisoning patients by injecting drugs into their IV bags.
Dr Raynaldo Ortiz, an anesthesiologist in Dallas, Texas, wore a mask and showed no emotion as a 12-person jury returned guilty verdicts on all 10 counts against him.
Surveillance videos caught Ortiz in 2022 putting IV bags into a warmer minutes before nurses took the bags. Multiple patients had cardiac emergencies minutes after being connected to the IV bags.
A fellow doctor, Melanie Kaspar, died from an IV bag and 11 other patients suffered cardiac emergencies.
‘There’s no closure. My best friend is gone,’ said John Kaspar, Kaspar’s widower, after the verdict on Friday.
‘I don’t think he ever looked me in the eye… It’s almost like you have so many emotions you can’t sift them out. You get flooded.’
Prosecutor argued that Ortiz made IV bags into ‘poison bombs’ that were dropped on clueless patients. The crimes took place at Baylor Scott & White Surgicare in North Dallas.
Ortiz appeared to be retaliating for being disciplined on the job in 2019, 2021 and 2022, according to prosecutors. They claimed that Ortiz had two businesses in financial turmoil and that he would be in deeper trouble if he stopped working at Baylor Scott & White Surgicare.
Prosecutors argued that Ortiz poisoned the IV bags in order to show that many doctors are faced with medical emergencies.
The defense team tried to make the case that the videos showed numerous people handling the IV bags and that the patients’ medical emergencies could be owed to other factors and their conditions.
Ortiz has been convicted on five counts of intentional adulteration of a drug, four counts of tampering with consumer products leading to serious bodily harm and one count of tampering with a consumer product.
He faces up to life in prison and is set to be sentenced in two to three months.
‘Dr Ortiz cloaked himself in the white coat of a healer,’ stated US Attorney Leigha Simonton after the jury’s verdict, ‘But instead of curing pain, he inflicted it.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.