HOWELL, Mich. (AP) — Days after a routine injection to ease back pain, Donna Kruzich and a friend crossed the Canadian border in 2012 to see late-summer theater in Stratford, Ontario.
The 78-year-old Michigan woman suddenly fell ill and returned home. By early October, she was dead.
“Most of the time she couldn’t communicate with us. She was basically in a coma,” recalled her son Michael Kruzich. “We knew she had meningitis – but we didn’t know how she got it.”
Evidence soon emerged: Donna Kruzich was one of at least 64 people in the US who died from contaminated steroids produced by a specialty pharmacy in Massachusetts. Almost 12 years later, the operator of the New England Compounding Center is returning to a Michigan courtroom on Thursday to receive his sentence for manslaughter.
Barry Cadden is already serving a 14-and-a-half-year sentence for federal crimes related to the extraordinary outbreak of fungal infections, which were blamed on dirty conditions inside the laboratory and caused meningitis and other debilitating illnesses. More than 700 people in 20 states have become sick, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Michigan is the only state that has charged Cadden and a key official, pharmacist Glenn Chin, with any deaths.
Cadden, 57, recently pleaded no contest to 11 counts of involuntary manslaughter in a deal that took second-degree murder charges off the table. Prosecutors also agreed to a minimum prison sentence of 10 years, which will run concurrently with the federal sentence.
This means he is unlikely to face further time in custody, an outcome that disappoints Michael Kruzich.
“My mother is gone and Cadden and Chin are responsible. My family would like to see Cadden go to trial. promoters.
Attorney General Dana Nessel said the majority of the 11 families supported the plea agreement.
“We ensure that this appeal matches your desire for closure and justice,” she said in a written statement on March 5.
Cadden’s attorney, Gerald Gleeson II, declined to comment before the sentencing. In Boston federal court in 2017, Cadden said he regretted “the full range of suffering” that occurred.
Chin did not reach a similar deal, court documents show, and his trial on 11 counts of second-degree murder is pending in the same courthouse in Livingston County, 60 miles (96.5 kilometers) northwest of Detroit. Separately, He is serving a 10 and a half year sentence federal sentence.
The New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Massachusetts, operated in a little-known but vital part of the U.S. health care system. Compounding pharmacies manufacture versions of medications that are often not available from large pharmaceutical companies.
Children, for example, may need a personalized dose that is different from the usual adult dose.
“They are very important,” said Eric Kastango, a pharmacist and industry expert who testified on behalf of prosecutors in Cadden’s federal trial. “I don’t think the general public is necessarily aware of what pharmacists do. They know they are going to a hospital and may need an IV. They may not know who did it or how they did it.”
By 2012, New England Compounding was shipping painkilling steroids to doctors across the U.S., including a clinic in Brighton, Michigan, where Donna Kruzich and others received treatment. But the lab was a mess, leading to mold growth in the manufacturing process.
“The environment quickly spiraled out of control,” Michigan prosecutors said in a court filing last June.
Investigators “discovered a company that put profits above human lives. Barry Cadden was the ‘big boss’ at NECC who made many of the company’s important decisions,” the state said.
Crime victims can speak in court in Michigan. Michael Kruzich, 70, said he does not plan to attend Thursday, although he sent a poem on behalf of his family.
He told the Associated Press that his mother was a “healthy, happy woman” who loved to travel and was treasurer of her golf league in the Ann Arbor area.
“I was told 12 years ago that you cannot harm someone more than kill them,” Kruzich said in his poem. “I’ve come to disagree – you can hurt them even more when justice fails them.”
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Associated Press researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this story.
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