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Ex-Nurse Charged in Slayings Still at Work

A decision by military officials to allow an ex-nurse accused of killing three patients to keep working at an Air Force hospital in Texas is wrong, critics say.

Capt. Michael Fontana, who is charged with murder in the deaths of three intensive-care patients at the Wilford Hall Medical Center, is still on duty in the medical library of the facility at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, even though he could face a life sentence if convicted, the San Antonio Express-News reported Sunday.

“That is outrageous. His place of duty should not be within a mile of that hospital,” Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University, told the newspaper.

Addicott, a former Army lawyer, contends that keeping a slaying suspect in a hospital is not good for the service’s image and could place Fontana at risk — not to mention alarming patients.

“The most unusual thing is that he’s still in the building,” Addicott told the Express-News.

Officials said Fontana, who is handling paperwork at Wilford, is free to go off base after work but is being “monitored closely by his work area and his supervisor.”

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