More than 100 patients were found suffering in the heat and were evacuated, many on stretchers or in wheelchairs.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A Florida judge rejected a prosecutor’s impassioned plea Monday, saying he would not reconsider his acquittal of a nursing home administrator in the overheating deaths of nine patients after Circuit Judge John J. Murphy III listened impassively as prosecutor Charles Morton made his case Monday morning for reconsideration.
“The state has not presented sufficient evidence that the Defendant acted with culpable negligence,” Murphy wrote Monday. Prosecutors cannot appeal the ruling, which is final.Carballo, 65, was operating the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills in September 2017 when Irma knocked out power to the 150-bed facility’s air conditioning. Temperatures rose inside the building over two-plus days before patients started dying on the second floor.
Irma had disconnected an electrical line that powered only the facility’s air conditioner. The facility’s other power remained. The power and air conditioning were also intact at a large regional hospital across the street, where prosecutors and families have argued the patients should have been evacuated.
Glendale Owens, whose 83-year-old father, Bobby Owens, died at the facility, was frustrated by the judge’s ruling. She believes the patients should have been evacuated to the hospital as soon as the nursing home’s temperatures started rising. Morton said the evidence presented had shown that Carballo had warnings from his medical staff that the second-floor patients were overheating well before they began dying, but that he was more concerned about money than their health.
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