NEW ORLEANS, July 18 (UPI) -- New Orleans authorities have arrested a doctor and two nurses allegedly involved in some of the 45 deaths of hospital patients in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Sources told WWL-TV, New Orleans, the three staff members were booked at the Orleans Parish Prison Monday night and released by a judge on their own recognizance.
They were charged with being principal to second-degree murder, the report said.
In the days after the Aug. 29 storm battered and then flooded the city, rumors emerged that staff at the Memorial Medical Center had used drug overdoses to euthanize the weakest of the stranded patients who would suffer in the blacked-out stifling hospital.
State Attorney General Charles Foti began an investigation, and issued 73 subpoenas for employees of the hospital, owned by Tenet Healthcare. The hospital never reopened and has been for sale since, the report said.
