Incident 40116

A former nursing assistant at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in West Virginia pleaded guilty on Tuesday to second-degree murder in the deaths of seven patients.

Prosecutors said that Reta Mays, who worked at the Louis A. Johnson Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Clarksburg, W.Va., in 2017 and 2018, administered fatal doses of insulin to military veterans who had not been prescribed it. She also pleaded guilty to a charge of assault with intent to commit murder in the case of an eighth patient, who survived.

Ms. Mays, 45, was charged on Monday. At a hearing on Tuesday, she answered a series of questions from the judge concerning the terms and conditions of her plea agreement by saying, “Yes, sir.”

For each of the seven second-degree murder charges, she faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, and for the count of assault with intent to commit murder, she faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

V.A. hospitals, which treat nine million patients annually, have struggled with a number of issues involving management and care that have sent Congress searching for remedies. The department has grappled with the aftermath of a 2014 scandal in which a hospital manipulated waiting lists to hide that veterans were facing long delays to see doctors.

Prosecutors said that a medical doctor at the Clarksburg hospital reported in June 2018 that multiple patients in the ward where Ms. Mays worked had experienced unexplained hypoglycemic episodes. The report led to an internal investigation, and Ms. Mays was removed from her position the next month.

As a nursing assistant who worked the night shift, Ms. Mays was responsible for measuring patients’ vital signs, observing patients who required extra attention and testing patients’ glucose levels. She was not authorized to administer medicine, including insulin, according to a court document.

When patients who do not have diabetes take insulin, or when diabetic patients receive more than the prescribed dose, they risk developing hypoglycemia, a condition that can cause seizures, comas and death.

A lawyer for Ms. Mays, Brian Kornbrath, declined to comment after the hearing on Tuesday.

Tony O’Dell, a lawyer representing five families who have filed lawsuits against the Clarksburg hospital, said an investigation by the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General was proceeding.

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“There were a lot of system failures at that hospital that allowed this woman to do what she did for as long as she did,” he said, adding that the hospital should not have stored the insulin in a place where Ms. Mays had access to it.

Mr. O’Dell said the hospital also failed to properly treat the patients for hypoglycemia after Ms. Mays administered the insulin.

In a statement on Tuesday, the V.A. Office of Inspector General said agents removed Ms. Mays from her position within days after learning about suspicious deaths at the facility.

“Without critical investigative actions being taken so expeditiously, additional lives could have been lost,” the office said.

Wesley Walls, a spokesman for the Louis A. Johnson Veterans Affairs Medical Center, said that measures for patient safety at the hospital “can only do so much to protect against criminal activity.”

“What happened in Clarksburg was an isolated criminal incident involving a single, now-fired person,” he said. “The actions of that individual do not define the facility, which is consistently rated among VA’s best.”

William Powell, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia, said in a statement that the government’s investigation “never lost sight of each of these lives and the sacrifices these men made for their country.”

“Though we can’t bring these men back because of her evil acts,” he said, “we hope the conclusion of the investigation and guilty plea helps ease the pain of the victims’ families.”