Nursing Home Owners Charged with Negligent Homicide, Cruelty in La.

It took only four hours for a Louisiana grand jury to charge the owners of St. Rita’s Nursing home – where 35 people died in post-Hurricane Katrina flooding – on charges of negligent homicide and cruelty to the infirm.

The case against Salvador and Mabel Mangano is one of two alleging that defendants were responsible for the deaths of elderly or sick people who died after the storm.

Attorney General Charles Foti had the Manganos booked with negligent homicide about two weeks after the storm, but the grand jury could not convene until Sept. 20 because the storm had flooded all but a few buildings in St. Bernard Parish and had scattered its residents.

The Manganos remained free on bond Sept. 20.

A gag order kept their attorneys and prosecutors from commenting.

The Manganos were originally arrested on 34 counts of negligent homicide. The grand jury added a 35th, for a body found later, as well as the cruelty charges.

The cruelty indictment, alleging that the couple “intentionally or through criminal negligence” mistreated or neglected 64 patients, is believed to cover survivors as well as patients who died.

More than 30 lawsuits have been filed against the couple by patients injured at the nursing home and the families of people who died there.

The Manganos sued the government last month, saying federal, state and local officials failed to keep residents safe and evacuate vulnerable citizens as the storm approached.

The Manganos have argued that their hurricane plan – keeping frail residents in place with food, water and generators rather than risking their lives by moving them – was responsible, and nobody would have died had the levees held.

Their attorney, James Cobb, has stressed that the nursing home never flooded before Katrina and the Manganos worried that an evacuation would kill some of their elderly patients.

In the other case involving the deaths of elderly or sick people, Foti has accused a doctor and two nurses of killing four of the 34 people who died at Memorial Medical Center during the chaotic days after the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane.

Dr. Anna Pou and nurses Cheri Landry and Lori Budo were arrested July 17 and released without bond. They were booked on suspicion of second-degree murder involving four trapped and desperately ill patients ranging in age from 62 to 90.

Attorneys for the three say they are innocent. Authorities are still evaluating evidence to present to a grand jury in the Memorial Medical Center case.

Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans and virtually wiped out neighboring St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. The Louisiana death toll was nearly 1,600.