Monday, April 14, 2024 – A doctor in Texas has been found guilty of injecting heart-stopping poison into IVs at his former medical clinic in North Dallas.
FOX 4 in Dallas reported that a 12-person jury found Dr.
Raynaldo Ortiz guilty on all 10 counts after nearly seven hours of
deliberation.
When the verdict was read, Ortiz showed no emotion for the
crimes he had committed.
As a result of Ortiz’s action, several patients suffered
cardiac emergencies and Dr. Melanie Kaspar died after using one of the IV bags,
prosecutors said.
Federal prosecutors said the anesthesiologist committed the
shocking crimes at Baylor Scott and White Surgicare North Dallas in retaliation
for a medical misconduct probe.
A criminal complaint accused Ortiz of injecting
nerve-blocking and bronchodilation drugs into patient IV bags.
Surveillance video showed the doctor placing an IV bag in a
stainless steel warmer outside an operating room on Aug. 19, 2022.
Minutes later, another staffer took the bag, and a patient
soon after reportedly suffered a heart attack.
Ortiz’s colleague, beloved anesthesiologist Melanie Kaspar,
took a contaminated IV bag home on June 21 to rehydrate due to an illness.
Almost immediately after inserting the IV into her vein, she
suffered a serious cardiac event and died.
An autopsy showed she was fatally poisoned by bupivacaine, a
numbing agent that the Justice Department said “is rarely abused” but used to
alleviate pain during surgery.
“There’s no closure. My best friend is gone,” John Kaspar,
Dr. Melanie Kaspar’s widower reportedly said shortly after the verdict. “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.”
The station reported that the witnesses called to the stand
during the trial included the anesthesiologist who discovered the bags were
tainted, John Kaspar, and a teen who suffered cardiac arrest during nose
surgery.
The incidents first began two days after Oritz was notified
of a disciplinary inquiry against him over his handling of a medical emergency.
Other doctors noted he complained the center was trying to
“crucify” him.
FOX 4 reported that there were 13 patients between May and
August 2022 who experienced similar cardiac emergencies, though prosecutors
only charged the doctor with causing bodily injury to four of the patients in
August.
A judge had ordered Ortiz be held before trial after
prosecutors argued that he was a danger to the community by citing, in part, a
2015 incident in which he shot his neighbor’s dog in retaliation for the woman
helping his then-girlfriend obtain a restraining order against him after a
domestic violence incident.
Ortiz was convicted of four counts of tampering with
consumer products resulting in serious bodily injury, one count of tampering
with a consumer product, and five counts of intentional adulteration of a drug,
prosecutors said.
Ortiz is expected to be sentenced in two to three months in
prison.
Surveillance video introduced into evidence at Dr. Raynaldo Ortiz's trial shows him retrieving IV bags from the warming bin and replacing them shortly thereafter, not long before the bags were carried into operating rooms where patients experienced complications. [No audio.] pic.twitter.com/wScGP7SVsE
— US Attorney N. Texas (@NDTXnews) April 12, 2024
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