Posted on 04/12/2024 7:16:04 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear
DALLAS - Dr. Raynaldo Ortiz has been found guilty of injecting dangerous drugs into IV bags at the Baylor Scott & White Surgicare in North Dallas.
The 12-person jury returned guilty verdicts on all 10 counts. The jury reached the guilty verdict after about seven hours of deliberations.
Ortiz was wearing a mask and showed no emotion as the verdict was read.
There were 11 patients who suffered cardiac emergencies, and a fellow doctor, Dr. Melanie Kaspar, died from the IV bags.
"There's no closure. My best friend is gone," said John Kaspar, Dr. Melanie Kaspar's widower, 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."
Video captured Ortiz repeatedly placing IV bags into a warmer minutes before nurses took bags out of the same location. Minutes after the bags were used, patients suffered cardiac emergencies.
Prosecutors said Ortiz turned IV bags into poison bombs that exploded on unsuspecting people.
Over the course of the case, prosecutors established a potential motive for the tampering. They believed Dr. Ortiz was retaliating for being disciplined in 2018 and again in 2021 and 2022. In May 2022, records show one of his patients had to be resuscitated with CPR.
The prosecution said that Ortiz's two businesses were losing money and faced even more financial trouble if he was stopped from practicing at the Baylor Scott & White Surgicare in North Dallas. Prosecutors said that Ortiz put the dangerous drugs in IV bags to try to show emergency situations happen to a lot of doctors.
Ortiz's defense team tried to poke holes in the prosecution's case, saying that there are videos of many people at the facility handling IV bags and that other medical conditions could explain the emergencies.
Witnesses called to the stand in the case included the anesthesiologist who discovered the IV bags were to blame for the medical emergencies, a teen who went into cardiac arrest during nose surgery, and the widower of Dr. Melanie Kaspar, who died after taking an IV bag from the facility home. Dr. Kaspar died after treating herself with one of the IV bags at home when she was sick.
In the trial, her widower testified how he tried to revive her with CPR before paramedics arrived, but was unable to.
"She went her whole life not being the center of attention, worked behind the drape in operating room," Kaspar said.
Kaspar said the past two years have been a struggle without his wife.
"Time stops. If you are lucky, you have a lot of friends who can shove you along. I've had many good friends. They've done exactly what was required of them. I thank every last one of them," he said.
Kaspar said one of the most difficult moments of the trial was seeing this newly released surveillance video of Ortiz filling up large syringes with a mix of different drugs.
"Him filling the syringes in the pre-op room, you can transpose what he did to Jack that day, to my wife. Tough to see," Kaspar said. He then put the syringes in his pockets.
The video was taken the day before 18-year-old Jack Adlerstein received one of the tainted IV bags.
His doctors testified he nearly died on the operating room table.
Between May and August 2022, there were 13 patients who experienced similar unexplained cardiac emergencies.
Prosecutors only charged Ortiz with causing serious bodily injury to four patients in August.
That's because those are the patients they could tie Ortiz to through the surveillance video.
The director of Baylor Scott & White Surgicare testified the cameras had only been installed in May after a break-in.
"I'd like to give a thank you to whoever was breaking into the surgical center so they could install the cameras. Because they wouldn't have existed otherwise," Kaspar said.
Kaspar said he is thankful Ortiz will no longer have access to patients.
"Get to know your anesthesiologist. They are the ones keeping you alive on the operating room table while the surgeon is doing their business," he added.
Of course this is only four of the, I believe 14, counts.
It would be truly ironic, and appropriate, if he gets death by lethal injection.
This guy had a history of being a sicko—and shouldn’t have been in his professional position at all, IMO.
CONVICTED OF ANIMAL CRUELTY
In a bizarre case, Ortiz was arrested in Murphy in 2015 and accused of shooting his neighbor’s dog with a pellet gun after the neighbor helped Ortiz’s girlfriend move out and later testified against him in a court hearing.
Ortiz was charged with animal cruelty.
The dog survived.
He pleaded not guilty but was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 25 days in jail.
The judge also ordered him to take anger management classes and pay $505 for restitution for the injured dog’s veterinarian bill.
Ortiz appealed his misdemeanor conviction, claiming that there was insufficient evidence, that he didn’t have the opportunity to object to proposed jury instructions, that the judge erred in responding to a jury message, and that the prosecutor who omitted several words in a jury charge during the arraignment.
The doctor lost on every argument.
The appeals court reviewed trial transcripts and in its decision affirming Ortiz’s conviction offered the following detailed account of the case.
The neighbor testified that at about 2:30 p.m. on April 29, 2015, she heard a gunshot while she was in her bedroom and heard her dog scream.
She ran into her backyard and saw “her dog’s chest covered in blood,” she told the jury.
Right before she heard the shot, she said she heard Ortiz drive into his driveway.
She knew it was him, she testified, because he had a “very loud sports car” and “it’s a very loud distinctive roar when he comes home.”
She immediately thought Ortiz had shot the animal. He shot rabbits “a lot” and they would run into her yard injured, she said.
Collin County jail records show Ortiz was arrested on Dec. 30, 2014, on a charge of family violence - assault by contact and released a day later. Court records show no charges were filed.
When police questioned him about shooting the dog, Ortiz denied committing the crime and said he didn’t have any weapons because his girlfriend took them all when they split.
Ortiz stopped cooperating with police about a week later after he showed up for a scheduled meeting with a detective at the police station. But when the detective arrived in the lobby to greet him three or four minutes later, he was gone, according to the appeal court ruling.
PREVIOUS CRIMINAL RECORD
Ortiz’s criminal record dates to 1995, just two years after he finished his residency at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
The Texas Medical Board was fully aware of Ortiz’s record and documented it in a 2018 case against him.
In June 1995 Ortiz was arrested for assault that caused bodily injury to a spouse, who later divorced him.
In September 2005, another woman filed for an emergency protective order alleging that he assaulted her.
In December 2014, Ortiz was arrested for assault domestic violence involving a third woman.
In January 2015, the third woman filed for an emergency protective order and settled with Ortiz for an “undisclosed amount of money,” according to the medical board’s review of his criminal cases.
In an affidavit, the mother of Ortiz’s son said Ortiz had been “abusive” for years.
“He has threatened to kill me before, even told me how he would do it, including cutting my finger off to get the ring,” the woman said. “He said the only thing stopping him from killing me was he would go to jail.”
Ortiz denied the allegations and denied he and the woman were ever married.
Ortiz claimed the woman “ransacked” his house before she left and took cash, gold, jewelry and 40 bottles of wine.
A judge granted a temporary protective order to keep the doctor away from her and their son but both parents were later given visitation rights.
Beyond bizarre but someone somewhere along the line during this man’s 8 years of medical schooling realized this man was insane.
Racism is treating a person differently because of attributes they are born with. Considering ethnicity and cultural differences when evaluating the world is not racism, it’s an essential custodial duty.
Goes to show that the medical profession won’t weed out the bad apples until they actually start actively killing people...but will quickly get rid of those who vocally advocate for patients’ health...else, a lot of medical professionals would have spoken out against Covid jabs/procedures.
“Not to blame the victim, but that seems like something you shouldn’t do. Probably forbidden.”
The IV bag would still have been used on the next person in the hospital.
My daughter is a nanny for a doctor. She’s gotten her medications before. I’m sure that it’s a common and legal practice. I work for a manufacturer of building materials. If I need something I get it for free.
I watched the movie, “The Good Nurse” on Netflix. I remember when it was reality.
This case is no different.
Any time a organization grows big enough that it has a bureaucracy it is heading down the road of corruption.
Because the bureaucracy will look out for it's self, first, last and always.
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