Ky. nurse charged with giving lethal morphine dose

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Lexington is accused of killing a 90-year-old patient with a morphine injection three years ago, according to an indictment released Wednesday.

The brief indictment alleges Maria Kelly Whitt, 32, killed patient Jesse L. Chain by injecting him with a lethal dose of morphine. It claims Whitt killed Chain “deliberately, maliciously and with premeditation and malice aforethought.” It does not give any details about Chain’s medical condition before he died.

Whitt pleaded not guilty on Tuesday, according to court documents. She was scheduled for a detention hearing Thursday.

Few other details were released. Kyle Edelen, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Lexington, said there was no specific reason why Whitt was indicted three years after Chain’s death.

“Cases are assessed individually and some cases take longer than others to evolve,” he said.

Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said in a statement Wednesday that his office and the Veterans Affairs Department have been jointly investigating since Chain died of acute morphine intoxication on Sept. 3, 2006, in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

Ginn called the case an “active homicide investigation.”

Maxine Graybill, Chain’s 68-year-old stepdaughter in Plant City, Fla., said officials with the Lexington coroner’s office told her they were immediately suspicious of the death. She said family members were told Chain had 14 times the allowable amount of morphine in his system.

Graybill said Chain was in intensive care for a heart condition when he died, but the family initially didn’t believe his stay in the ICU was life-threatening.

“They didn’t make it sound like it was serious enough for us to come,” she said. But she later received a call saying that Chain was dying.

“We didn’t make it up there in time,” she said.

Chain served as a medic in Europe during World War II, Graybill said, and worked in a cotton mill for many years. He was a “peacemaker” who avoided hunting for sport because he didn’t want to kill animals.

He served with the 445th Bombardment Group of the Army Air Corps, according to an obituary published in The Ledger Independent in Maysville. The obituary said he died on Sept. 3, 2006.

An attorney for Whitt did not return calls seeking comment. A call to Whitt’s home in Mount Sterling was not answered. Her nursing license was due to expire at the end of October, according to records with the state Board of Nursing.

Destie Stimes, a spokeswoman at the Lexington VA Medical Center, referred all questions to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Lexington.

Associated Press Writer Brett Barrouquere contributed to this report.