DALLAS (AP) — A Dallas anesthesiologist was convicted Friday of injecting a nerve-blocking agent and other drugs into bags of intravenous fluid at a surgery center where he worked, which led to the death of a co-worker and caused emergencies. cardiac arrests for several patients, federal prosecutors said.
A jury convicted Raynaldo Riviera Ortiz Jr., 60, of four counts of tampering with a consumer product resulting in serious bodily injury, one count of tampering with a consumer product and five counts of willfully tampering with a drug, prosecutors said. A sentencing date has not yet been set for Ortiz, who faces up to 190 years in prison.
“Dr. Ortiz dressed in the white coat of a healer, but instead of healing pain, he inflicted it,” said U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton for the Northern District of Texas in a video statement.
Prosecutors said evidence presented at trial showed that several patients at Surgicare North Dallas suffered cardiac emergencies during routine medical procedures performed by multiple doctors between May 2022 and August 2022. During that time, an anesthesiologist who worked at the facility that day died while being treated for dehydration using an intravenous bag.
Prosecutors told Ortiz, who was arrested in September 2022, he secretly placed the contaminated intravenous bags in a warming box at the facility and waited for them to be used in his colleagues’ surgeries.
Evidence presented at trial showed that at the time of the emergencies, Ortiz was facing disciplinary action for an alleged medical error made in one of his own surgeries, prosecutors said.
