Nurse Accused of Bid to Speed 2 Dying Patients’ Deaths

A registered nurse has been arrested on charges that she tried to hasten the deaths of two dying patients in her care at Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, officials said Tuesday.

Authorities said Linda Rangel, 35 of Canyon Country lowered the oxygen level on a mechanical ventilator on two different occasions in 1987. In both cases, officials said, the patients had shot themselves.

Rangel, who resigned from the hospital staff last year, was arrested Monday night on suspicion of attempted murder in connection with the deaths of Lorraine Sammons, 50, of Lake View Terrace, and Pedro Contreras, 40, of Sun Valley. Rangel, who is free on $15,000 bail, is scheduled to be arraigned in San Fernando Municipal Court on Dec. 12.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lee Harris said that Rangel made the decision to alter the ventilation without consulting the doctor who attended the two patients nor their families.

Chilling Thought

“It’s chilling to think that nurses can make that decision,” Harris said.

Harris said Rangel was not charged with murder because it was unclear if the two deaths were caused directly by her adjustment of the oxygen levels or by the gunshot wounds.

Sammons died on Feb. 5, 1987, within an hour of the ventilator’s adjustment, and Contreras died June 16, 1987, four hours after his oxygen level was changed, authorities said.

“I think she probably believed they were going to die anyway, and it was just too much heroic effort keeping them alive,” Los Angeles Police Sgt. Phil Vannatter said.

Rangel had been a critical-care nurse at Holy Cross Medical Center since 1980 and was “considered an outstanding nurse,” Vannatter said.

A Holy Cross Medical Center spokeswoman said the hospital had been cooperating in the investigation since accusations were made against Rangel in June, 1987, but had been asked by the district attorney’s office not to discuss the case.

News Release

The spokeswoman said the hospital stood by a news release issued May 13 saying that a nurse, who was not named in the release, had been suspended after an investigation of charges by “an anonymous source” that she “tampered with the life-support system of a patient in our critical-care unit.”

The statement said the accusation was made two days after the incident allegedly occurred on June 16, 1987. The nurse involved was suspended June 21 and voluntarily resigned June 24, the statement said. The news release said nothing about the patient’s condition after the alleged tampering.

The news release said the hospital had reported the incident immediately to state medical authorities.

There had been no result from the state investigation when the Los Angeles Police Department became involved in January of this year, after receiving an anonymous letter, said the officers who arrested Rangel.

The hospital “did everything they possibly could” to help the investigation, Vannatter said.

Worked Elsewhere

Sgt. Kirk Mellecker said police had not investigated her employment in the 17 months since she left Holy Cross, but that it was known that “she worked in several other hospitals after that through a registry,” an agency that provides nurses to hospitals and other employers on a temporary basis.

The information was passed to the state Board of Registered Nursing, which licenses nurses and has been involved in the investigation from the beginning, Mellecker said.

“It was their responsibility to take whatever action they thought appropriate,” he said.

There are “probably hundreds of nurses registries in Southern California,” said Susan Brank, the board’s assistant executive officer.

She said the board could not reveal whether nursing regulators had tracked Rangel’s employment since leaving Holy Cross because state law requires that investigations of nursing misconduct charges be kept confidential.

Valid License

“We have been investigating the case in coordination with the Los Angeles Police Department,” but no administrative action has been taken against Rangel, and Rangel’s nursing license is still valid, she said.

Administrative action to revoke a nursing license does not begin until the state attorney general’s office brings such a request, she said, although in some criminal cases, prosecutors may ask the judge to suspend the license until state officials take action after a verdict.