NEW ORLEANS — A Louisiana businessman who sent more than 800 elderly residents from his seven nursing homes to face Hurricane Ida in a crowded, poorly equipped warehouse, pleaded no contest to 15 felony charges Monday and was sentenced to three years probation.
Bob Dean Jr. must also pay more than $358,000 in restitution to the state health department and more than $1 million in monetary fines, but state Attorney General Liz Murrill expressed frustration in a press release that Dean had not received no prison sentence.
“We specifically asked that he be sentenced to a minimum of 5 years in prison, and not just probation. I respect our judicial system and that the judge has ultimate discretion over the appropriate sentence, but I remain of the opinion that Dean should be serving prison time,” his statement read.
Dean, 70, owned seven nursing homes in New Orleans and southeast Louisiana. As Departure approached, Dean moved hundreds of residents to a building in the city of Independence, about 70 miles northwest of New Orleans.
Authorities said conditions at the warehouse deteriorated quickly after the heavy storm on August 29, 2021. They found sick and elderly people bedded on mattresses on the wet floor, some crying for help, others lying in their own trash. Civil lawsuits against Dean’s company said the roof leaked and toilets overflowed in the stuffy warehouse, and there was little food and water.
A few days after the storm, the state reported the deaths of seven of the evacuees, five of them classified as storm-related.
When Dean was arrested on state charges in June 2022, he had lost state licenses and federal funding for his nursing homes.
According to Murrill, Dean pleaded no contest to eight counts of cruelty to the sick, two counts of obstruction of justice and five counts of Medicaid fraud. Judge Brian Abels sentenced Dean to a total of 20 years in prison, but deferred the sentences in favor of three years of probation. The appeal was filed in Tangipahoa, north of New Orleans.
Defendants who plead no contest do not admit guilt but choose not to defend themselves against the charges. They are then liable to be convicted and punished as if there had been a confession of guilt.
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