Results of probe in baby’s death sent to District Attorney

The results of a police investigation into how catheters came apart, killing one child and severely injuring another, in the Sunrise Children’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit have been sent to the Clark County district attorney’s office.

“We sent it to them for review and are awaiting their response,” Las Vegas police spokesman Bill Cassell said Friday.

Cassell did not know how long the case has been in the prosecutor’s hands, and Clark County spokeswoman Stacey Welling said the case remains under review by the district attorney’s office.

The July 2, 2010, death of 2-month-old Miowne Obote, whose catheter was severed, was ruled a homicide in by the Clark County coroner.

Two nurses, Jessica May Rice and Sharon Ochoa-Reyes, had been called persons of interest by the Metropolitan Police Department investigation into “intentional patient harm.” No criminal charges have been filed. Authorities have refused to say what connected the nurses to “intentional patient harm.”

Both nurses were fired by Sunrise, and the Nevada State Nursing Board summarily suspended their licenses. But in September 2010, the Nursing Board, ruling that there was no evidence that the nurses did anything wrong, reinstated the licenses of the nurses.

Sunrise officials, however, refused to rehire them.

Service Employees International Union Nevada, which represents the nurses, took both firings to arbitration.

The mystery of what actually happened in the hospital’s intensive care unit for children deepened with a Dec. 19 ruling by a federal arbitrator that called for Rice to be reinstated with back pay.

The results of the tests done on Sunrise catheter lines at a federal laboratory, which were requested by Las Vegas police, are being weighed by prosecutors.

Ochoa-Reyes told the Review Journal in November 2010 that nurses had been having problems with catheters breaking for months.

No one paid attention to the breakage until babies got hurt, she said.

Her attorney, George Kelesis, has said the hospital pointed at nurses to cover up long-standing problems with product failure and to protect the institution from liability.

An arbitrator’s ruling is expected in Ochoa-Reyes case in February.

On Friday, Rice’s attorney, Kathleen Murphy Jones, said the date of Rice’s reinstatement is still being “worked out,” as is the amount of money she should be repaid.

She said that Rice had to file for bankruptcy after her firing and that Sunrise fought unsuccessfully to keep Rice from receiving unemployment.

The attorney said Rice was out of work for months until she found a job with a home health company that pays her half of what she made at Sunrise.

Jones said she is happy that Rice will get back pay but said the arbitrator’s ruling “can never undo the damage done to her reputation by Sunrise.”