FBI Harassment Charged In Probe

FBI Harassment Charged In Probe

BY MARY JO FRANK

News Staff Reporter

Procedures being used by the FBI in the probe of respiratory arrests at the Veterans Administration Hospital here should be investigated, according to the attorney for two nurses employed at the hospital.

Attorney Thomas O’Brien charged the two nurses, Leonore Perez and Filipina Narciso, were targets of improper questioning by the FBI about the deaths caused by mysterious breathing failures at the hospital.

O’Brien said he is considering taking the complaints to the U.S. Justice Department or Sen. Frank Church’s Senate committee probing the FBI and CIA after a federal grand jury completes its investigation of the deaths at the VA hospital.

O’Brien said Miss Narciso had been subjected to marathon six-hour grilling.

“She asked to leave the room three times but was not allowed to,” O’Brien said. “On another occasion, agents told her she either had to confess or take a lie detector test to clear her, and gave her five minutes to respond.”

Richard DeLonis, chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Detroit, conceded that the nurses, and others at the hospital had been questioned numerous times, sometimes at great length. But he said the questioning was justified.

Miss Narciso, 29, of Ypsilanti, and Mrs. Perez, 31, formerly of 1117 Nielson Ct., were assigned to the VA Hospital's Intensive Care Unit at the time a total of 56 breathing failures occurred to patients in that ward in July and August. Eleven patients died and of that number, six of the deaths were classified at one time as “suspicious.”

Traces of pancuronium, a powerful muscle relaxant, were found in the body fluids of some of the patients affected. Investigators said the drug may have been intentionally injected into patients who were given intravenous therapy at the time.

Miss Narciso and Mrs. Perez have been interviewed at least five times by the FBI since August, O’Brien said.

The two have appeared twice before the grand jury, O’Brien said he doesn’t think they will be recalled.

Miss Narciso, who talked with grand jury investigators for approximately three hours on Wednesday, reportedly emerged from the grand jury room relaxed and occasionally smiling. She told reporters she didn’t feel like she was being treated as a suspect.

O’Brien said he has not seen a note reportedly written by the victim of a breathing failure which led to the interrogation of the nurses.

The note allegedly was written by John McCrery, 49, of Coloma, on the afternoon of Aug. 15 after he suffered a breathing failure. He reportedly told FBI agents he had seen a nurse injecting something into his intravenous tube about 15 seconds before the breathing arrest. According to news reports, McCrery identified Miss Narciso as the nurse by writing the letters’ “PIA” on a sheet of paper given him by an attending cardiologist. PIA is a hospital nick name for Miss Narciso.

Following open heart surgery at the U-M Hospital McCrery reportedly has been unable to remember identifying Miss Narciso or writing the note.

O’Brien said he understood McCrery, concerned about other breathing arrests on his floor that afternoon, called for a nurse. Miss Narciso responded to that emergency call, according to O’Brien.

The day after the breathing arrest McCrery reportedly told a physician that he had seen a man, not a nurse, injecting something into intravenous tube, O’Brien said.

When Mrs. Perez asked McCrery the day after the breathing arrest what had happened to him, O'Brien said, he wrote a note to her indicating he had no idea of who injected the substance into his intravenous tubing.

O’Brien said although he has not talked to McCreary he has been told it isn’t uncommon for a person suffering a heart attack or undergoing heart surgery to later suffer some amnesia.

Mrs. Perez, who had applied for a transfer prior to the respiratory arrests, is now working for a VA Hospital in Chicago.

Miss Narciso, who has worked at the VA Hospital for three years, has been reassigned from patient care to correcting papers of student nurses and other teaching duties, O’Brien said.