A West Virginia Veteran’s Affairs worker pleaded guilty on Tuesday to killing seven patients by injecting them with doses of insulin, according to a report.
Reta Mays, who worked as a nursing assistant at the Louis A. Johnson Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Clarksburg, pleaded guilty to a total of eight felonies: seven second-degree murder counts, and one count of assault with the intent to commit murder, reports CNN.
According to court documents, the veterans were killed from hypoglycemia, which is when the blood sugar of a non-diabetic patient is lower than normal, or when more than the prescribed amount of insulin is injected into the body.
Mays, who worked the night shift, administered the doses of insulin even though she did not have authorization to. None of the victims were not close to death when they were injected with the lethal doses.
The deaths of the veterans, which occurred from July 2017 to June 2018, sparked an internal investigation by the Department of Veteran Affairs.
In June 2018, one of the doctors raised concerns about the deaths of non-diabetic patients. Mays was removed from her position as soon as the complaints became public.
“Immediately upon discovering these serious allegations, Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center leadership brought them to the attention of the VA’s inspector general while putting safeguards in place to ensure the safety of each and every one of our patients,” said a spokesperson for the facility at the time.
The inspector general of the VA’s office also called the incidents “tragic and heartbreaking.”