Search warrant: Madison nurse suspected of disconnecting oxygen tube from son on ventilator

The incident, reported to Madison police by Mary LaHam, the hospital’s vice president of nursing care services and chief nursing officer, happened on Jan. 19, according to a search warrant filed Wednesday in Dane County Circuit Court.

LaHam told police, the document states, that the tube, part of an endotracheal tube that provided oxygen to the patient, had been disconnected “in a manner that would not happen accidentally,” and that when the breathing apparatus was later removed from the patient, he told other hospital staff that his mother had tried to kill him.

The Wisconsin State Journal is not naming the patient’s mother at this time because she has not been arrested or charged with a crime. She is a nurse at St. Mary’s but works in a different building nearby and was not involved in her son’s care.

The warrant sought court authorization to search a cellphone seized from the nurse by police. It states police are investigating the crime of reckless endangerment.

According to the search warrant, a detective, while trying to turn off the phone, saw a text message from the nurse that said something to the effect of, “The police just interrogated me and want to take my phone. I’m pissed, they think I’m a serial killer.”

A spokesperson for Madison police, who are investigating the matter, did not respond to email messages and phone calls. Spokespersons for St. Mary’s Hospital also did not respond to messages.

According to the search warrant:

The patient was in the intensive care unit for observation following a drug overdose and was placed on a ventilator to aid his breathing.

He was heavily sedated and his arms were restrained to keep him from inadvertently injuring himself by trying to remove an intubation device, a common practice for intubated patients at hospitals. His mother was allowed to visit him.

An ICU nurse told police the patient was on a drug to relieve anxiety that also can act as a sedative. He was “interactive” and conscious, the ICU nurse told police, but his arms were restrained.

Shortly after midnight on Jan. 19, the alarm sounded on the patient’s ventilator. Another ICU nurse came into the room and found the patient’s mother seated asleep in a chair, snoring, but the ICU nurse said she appeared to be “faking it.”

The patient’s mother told police that when the ventilator alarm went off she was in her son’s room. She said she was holding his hand when he began to experience respiratory distress, so she pressed a button to call the nurse to the room.

But ICU staff told investigators that nurses who responded to the ventilator alarm said they weren’t responding to a call signal. One of those nurses also told police that when she got to the room the patient’s mother was in a chair, apparently asleep.

The disconnection of the tube at that critical junction point was described to police by staff as “one in a million.” It was reconnected and the patient was stabilized. Later in the day, when he was taken off the ventilator, the patient told nurses that his mother had tried to kill him.

Kevin Kobler, the hospital’s director of critical care, told police that the endotracheal tube has several junction points that are specifically designed to fail before the point where the disconnection occurred. He said any of the other points would have failed first.

A demonstration of the tube disconnection, performed by investigators, also found that it took some twisting and pulling to disconnect the tube at the junction point where the patient’s tube had become disconnected.