Three employees surrender in deaths at sweltering Hollywood nursing home

In this Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017 file photo, a woman is transported from The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills as patients are evacuated after a loss of air conditioning due to Hurricane Irma. (Amy Beth Bennett)

Jorge Carballo, the nursing home’s chief administrator; Sergo Colin, supervising nurse; and two nurses on duty at The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills — Althia Meggie and Tamika Miller — are facing manslaughter charges.

Tamika Miller

Carballo, Colin and Meggie will have to spend the night in jail and appear before a Broward County judge on Tuesday morning to see whether they can be released on bond.

Miller, 31, who does not have a lawyer, has been jailed in Miami-Dade County since Saturday evening, records show. It would likely take an extra day to get her transferred to Broward County, attorneys said.

Carballo, Colin, Meggie and their lawyers met about noon at a law office and together went to the jail where they quietly slipped in to begin the hours-long booking process.

Jorge Carballo

“They’re very concerned. They’re upset. I mean, they’re bewildered about why they’re being arrested,” Colin’s defense attorney David Frankel said Monday afternoon.

Carballo, 61, and Colin, 45, each face a dozen counts of aggravated manslaughter, Frankel said.

That’s one count for each of the eight patients who died of heat exposure on Sept. 13, 2017, after three days without air conditioning, and the four who died in coming weeks and were ruled heat-related homicides.

Sergo Colin

Colin had been left in charge of the building even though he had started working there just about a week earlier.

Meggie was a fairly new hire and Miller didn’t have much experience, yet they were left to care for the most vulnerable and seriously ill residents on the second floor, where temperatures soared.

Meggie had worked a total of 10 days in the three months she had been there and hadn’t worked a shift in three weeks. Miller had become a licensed practical nurse that same year.

Eleven of the 12 who died of heat exposure were on the second floor. The first patient to die had a temperature of 108.3 when she was taken to the Memorial Regional Hospital across the street. The next had a temperature of 107 degrees.

Althia Meggie

Meggie’s charges include two counts of manslaughter and two counts of tampering with or fabricating evidence, Frankel said. He had not yet seen a listing of Miller’s charges but suspected they were the same.

After leaving the jail Monday afternoon, Frankel said he had not yet seen the arrest warrants or affidavits for the warrants but felt optimistic about getting Colin, Carballo and Meggie released on bond while they await trial.

“I expect the state and I will be able to work out bond amounts,” he said.

Hollywood police announced a press conference to be held Tuesday morning to discuss the department’s two-year criminal investigation into the dozen heat-related deaths at The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills.

“No additional information regarding this ongoing investigation will be provided prior to 10 a.m. on Tuesday,” police spokeswoman Miranda Grossman said in an email

Hurricane Irma knocked out the air conditioning at the nursing home on Sunday, Sept. 10, 2017. For three days staff tried to tamp down the escalating heat with fans, portable coolers and by hooking chillers up to air ducts.

But by early Wednesday morning, Sept. 13, 2017, patients were sweltering, feeling faint and dizzy. Some were breathing heavily, others were panting. Between 2:55 a.m. and 3:09 p.m. that day eight patients were pronounced dead. Six more would follow in subsequent weeks; two of those deaths were not deemed to be heat-related.

“I am deeply saddened by the fact that these health care workers — good people, family people, stable people — will be dragged through the mud," said Carballo’s defense attorney James A. Cobb Jr.

Cobb believes the Hollywood Police Department vowed to make someone pay for the deaths they saw. “I understand the emotion,” he said. “But emotion shouldn’t dictate whether or not criminal charges are brought.”

Meggie’s lawyer, Lawrence Hashish, felt likewise.

“She’s in shock. She’s hurt,” he said of his 36-year-old client, a temporary, part-time employee who picked up emergency shifts at short-staffed facilities.

“She jumped into emergency mode and was helping whoever needed help. She didn’t panic, she didn’t break down, she called 911 when needed, she was comforting residents," he said.

“It doesn’t appear that anyone was neglected,” Hashish said. “However, the Hollywood police want somebody to pay for it, so they chose the easiest targets.”

Cobb has experience in such cases.

He wrote the book “Flood of Lies, the St. Rita’s Nursing Home Tragedy” after successfully defending nursing home owners in Louisiana who were charged with negligent homicide after Hurricane Katrina, when 35 elderly patients at St. Rita’s drowned in their wheelchairs and beds.

The trial lasted six weeks and the defendants were acquitted.

The Hollywood case is very similar, he said.

The Louisiana jury thought it was inappropriate for the government to prosecute health care workers and caregivers who showed up for work during a hurricane and then had to make tough decisions, Cobb said.

“We should not be charging health care workers," he said. "If we start doing that and the next storm headed for Florida, if I were a health care worker, I wouldn’t show up. That is the policy risk the police and prosecutors run.”

The defense, Cobb said, will show that policymakers were to blame.

The nursing home is no longer in operation. State regulators revoked its license and the facility laid off 245 of its workers.

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Three employees surrender in deaths at sweltering Hollywood nursing home