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Texas Nurse Charged with Killing 5 with Bleach
Associated Press/AP Online
April 04, 2009
LUFKIN, Texas — Kimberly Saenz worked eight months as a nurse at the busiest dialysis clinic in town. Her turbulent final month on the job is all anyone remembers. One patient after another died last April for reasons no one could explain. Ambulances had to rush people to the emergency room almost every day. Things got so grim at the Lufkin Dialysis Center that the clinic shut down to investigate.
One year later, prosecutors say they have an explanation: Saenz deliberately injected 10 patients with bleach, killing five of them in what were probably excruciatingly painful deaths.
Investigators have offered no hint at a motive.
“How can someone that sick walk around and appear to be a normal person?” said Linda Few, whose mother, Opal, was among the five who died. “This many people? It’s blowing my mind. I mean, we live in Lufkin.”
This photo provided by the Angelina County Sheriff's Office shows former nurse Kimberly Saenz in Lufkin, Texas, Wednesday, April 1, 2009. (Source: AP)
In a chilling indictment handed up this week, Saenz, 35, was charged with one count of capital murder covering five patients. She was also charged with aggravated assault against five other patients who were allegedly injected with bleach but survived.
Among them was Debra Oates, who left the clinic on an ambulance stretcher April 26 last year when her arm would not stop bleeding. Her nurse that day was Saenz, who Oates said often helped her pass the dreary, hours-long dialysis treatments by telling jokes.
“I started throwing up and having chest pains,” Oates said last year. “I was hurting all over.”
Oates said she watched three people before her rushed to the hospital on the same day she was stricken. Altogether, 34 emergency calls were made from the clinic in April — more than three times the number in March.
Investigators believe Saenz used syringes to inject bleach into the patients’ dialysis lines.
nyanbenmommy1
about 4 years ago
106 comments
This is really sad. Five people lost their lives because of this woman and for what.... you can see from her mugshot she has no remorse
catty0009
about 4 years ago
50 comments
what was the sense in this? I have heard some nurses love the adrenaline rushes when there is a code and that is what they love, besides getting to be the "hero" in saving......wow....this is just plain sick.......I agree with lizmags that there HAS to be a underlying mental disorder that is just starting to surface....there is no way on this earth that I could ever fathom doing this to someone......
electric_harlowww
about 4 years ago
296 comments
What a sick individual!! I thought a being a nurse meant you tried to help people get better, not die!! Ugh, surely she will get life in prison or the death penalty, and if she does, they should administer bleach as one of the lethal injections!!!
lizmags
about 4 years ago
42 comments
It sounds as if this person has a serious mental disorder that took over her judgements and mind. Possibly sociopathic in nature, but more likely a bipolar agitated mania episode. Terrible outcome none the less. Hopefully she will get the help she needs and the families/coworkers will find the ability to forgive such a horrific tragedy.
ojackieo69
about 4 years ago
20 comments
I am amazed like many of you that this incident wasn't remedied sooner. To have so many patients rushed to the hospital in such a short period of time...where was her supervisor, manager? Nursing is still one of the most trusted professions, but with nurses like this on the loose..it won't be that way for long.
Account Removed
about 4 years ago
I'd like to inject her with some bleach! Sick woman.
honeyrose92
about 4 years ago
28 comments
it is an eerie thing. I tried to rationalize it out ... that maybe she snapped after her mom died. She may have thought of killing them they would be better off. But why make them suffer. This was increased over and over .... not good.
2BARN
about 4 years ago
12 comments
She also knew working in dialysis what effects that bleach was going to have on their red blood cells and cardiac arrest that is sick!!
2BARN
about 4 years ago
12 comments
I work in a dialysis clinic and I could not imagine someone hurting the patients like that. It really makes you wander about your caregiver these days! It also makes those of us in the medical field who love our jobs and helping people get looked at differently because of people like this!
Sykepleier
about 4 years ago
68 comments
WOW! This is scary that someone that should be helping you is actually killing you. I wonder as to what the motive was. I can not possibly imagine one.
sarah2215
about 4 years ago
4 comments
This might be incorrect but i worked with a drug addicted nurse and she was fired. She ended up working in dialysis after getting clean because those nurses don't give narcotics as much as other areas. She has since had her license taken away again for drugs. I wonder if many nurses like her end up in dialysis?
mleafrn
about 4 years ago
12 comments
People do trust nurses, read any survey of most trusted professionals. What is sad is the nursing shortage is so severe that someone who is mentally ill can get a job in a critical unit like dialysis with no oversight.
mmlpn99
about 4 years ago
58 comments
I agree, that this is why people in general don't trust nurses! This is one of the craziest things I have heard in a long time!
sruhter
about 4 years ago
4 comments
This is truely why people don't trust nurses, and it gives nurses across the world a bad name. How can one person be so cold, we got into this career because we want to help people, not hurt them. People should look up to us, not fear us. People are sick now of days.
janceyrt
about 4 years ago
48 comments
OMG! How or better yet, why would she do this! I don't understand how someone would have the thought process to do such a thing. For once I'm embarrassed for my home state....Texas.