Nursing assistant admits to killing 7 patients while working at US Veterans hospital

A nursing assistant pleaded guilty to the intentional killing of seven in-patient military veterans over a span of one year at a VA hospital in West Virginia. Her hearing was streamed live via Zoom last Tuesday, and sentencing has been scheduled at a later date.

46-year-old Reta Mays, a staff member at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg, admitted to injecting fatal doses of insulin to confined patients between the months of July 2017 and June 2018. She was charged earlier this week with seven counts of second-degree murder as well as assault with intent to commit murder on another patient.

In 2018, Mays was fired by the hospital after they began an internal investigation over the multiple deaths in her ward. Findings showed that the patients died of severe hypoglycemia even though their medical records showed they were not known to be diabetics.

VA Inspector General Michael Missal immediately sent a team of investigators and tagged Mays as a person of interest.

The motivation for her murderous intentions are still in the grey as prosecutors fail to get satisfactory responses from Mays. She has repeatedly denied all the accusations against her but gave in to plead guilty after realising the strength of the prosecutor's case.

Mays has since signed a plea agreement from which she faces a maximum penalty of 7 life sentences with an additional 20-year imprisonment plus $2 million (£1.6 million) or roughly $250,000 ( £200,00) for each of her victims. At this time, her lawyers are asking for a 6-month defence preparation prior to sentencing, as they are looking into pleading for a lesser penalty. However, Assistant US Attorney Jarod Douglas was quick to contest this, saying it is too long of a wait considering the victims' families are in poor conditions of health and would want some closure sooner. The District Judge will update on this case by October 30.

The court hearing which took place last Tuesday, saw the former nursing assistant giving feeble responses during routine questioning. She told the judge that she was currently undergoing treatment for post-traumatic disorder with the VA, along with high blood pressure. Her military background is yet to be known.

The case has been receiving criticism due to the slow pace of the investigation but US Attorney for the Northern District of Virginia, William Powell, says "The investigation was complicated, extraordinarily time intensive and the focus of numerous agents and prosecutors for two years. We wanted to secure this case down, to nail it down in every possible way."

The investigation had a lineup of 350 interviews, about 60 subpoenas and search warrants issued, as well as the need to go through all 1,200 time cards together with 670,000 emails of all hospital employees. On top of that, the victims bodies were also exhumed for autopsies.