VA Suspects Have Witness

VA Suspects Have Witness

BY JOHN BARTON News Police Reporter

The Ann Arbor attorney for two nurses the government says are suspects in the Veterans’ Administration Hospital murder case will ask to take sworn testimony from a witness he says supports the innocence of his clients, The News has learned.

The lawyer, Thomas C. O’Brien, intends to file in federal court today a request to take a deposition from a VA hospital patient who claims to have direct knowledge of the mysterious breathing failure suffered by a key government witness in the case, Richard Neely, 61, of Osceola, Ind.

O’Brien's witness reportedly is confined to a wheelchair and says he spoke at length with Neely following Neely's respiratory arrest.

O’Brien’s move is seen as a direct counterattack on a court order already granted by U.S. District Court Judge Philip L. Pratt on April 22 to take Neely’s testimony that he saw one of O'Brien's clients, Leonora Perez, near his bedside when he suffered the unexpected breathing failure on July 30. 

The head of the federal investigation into the suspected murders and attempted murders at the VA facility. Asst. U.S. Atty. Richard L. Delonis, was granted authority to take Neely’s statement because Neely suffers from terminal bladder cancer and may die before the case can be brought to trial.

O’Brien has already appealed Pratt’s decision to allow the Neely deposition.

Neither of O’Brien’s, clients, Mrs. Perez, or Filipina Narciso, of Ypsilanti, has been formally charged in last year’s breathing failures which investigators believe were caused by deliberate injections of a muscle-relaxing drug.

Both nurses worked at the hospital’s intensive care unit during the six weeks in July and August when many suspicious respiratory arrests occurred. Investigators also believe the drug-induced breathing failures led to as many as six deaths.

Delonis could not be reached for comment on O’Brien’s latest move.