VA nurse pleads guilty to WWII veteran's death

Nurse pleads guilty to veteran death

WENDY MITCHELL wendy.mitchell@lee.net | Posted: Monday, January 10, 2011

LEXINGTON -- A nurse has pled guilty to the 2006 killing of a Maysville veteran.
According to Kerry B. Harvey, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, Department of Veterans Affairs Hospital Medical Center nurse Maria K. Whitt, 33, pled guilty Monday in U.S. District Court in Lexington, to involuntary manslaughter for the death of Jessie Lee Chain.
Chain, 90 at the time of his death, was a patient at VAHMC in Lexington and terminally ill, officials said.
Chain was a World War II veteran who served with the 445th Bombardment Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was a retiree from January and Wood Company in Maysville.
Whitt, an intensive care nurse at the hospital, acknowledged on Monday that on Sept. 3, 2006 she provided an unapproved 10 ml dose of morphine to Chain; he died the same afternoon.
According to court records, an attending physician prescribed morphine for Chain; following Chain's death, another nurse notice that Chain's bottle of morphine was empty and "should've had significantly more left in it." Morphine pump records indicated additional doses were administered that exceeded the prescribed amount.
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Nurse pleads guilty to veteran death