A former Wisconsin nurse accused of amputating a dying man’s foot without his consent is facing felony charges, court records show.
Mary K Brown, 38, was previously employed as a hospice nurse at the Spring Valley Health and Rehab Center, located about 58 miles east of Minneapolis, when she was charged with physical abuse of an elder person, intentionally causing great bodily harm, and mayhem, according to a criminal complaint, KTSP reported.
The charges stemmed from an incident that began in March of this year, when an unidentified man was admitted to the hospice centre. Doctors believed he was close to death as severe frostbite was found on both his feet, the news outlet reported.
From March 2022 until May, the unidentified 62-year-old man was placed in the care of Ms Brown at the hospice centre. By the end of May, the criminal complaint reviewed by WQOW claims that doctors had begun saying that they believed the man was close to death.
The exact date of the man’s death is not reported in the criminal complaint. A Pierce County medical examiner who was performing an autopsy on the unidentified 62-year-old man in June noticed that one of the deceased man’s feet had been removed and was instead “lying beside him”.
Authorities who interviewed witnesses at the facility write in the criminal complaint that Ms Brown allegedly cut off the patient’s right foot – which was being held on by some skin and a couple of tendons – on 27 May, despite never receiving permission or an order from a doctor or the patient.
Ms Brown reportedly admitted to amputating the patient’s foot during an interview with police and claimed she had only done so out of concern for the man’s comfort, WQOW reported.
It is unclear if the amputation caused the dying man pain, as co-workers of Ms Brown offered varying accounts about how the procedure went down.
Kevin Larson, the facility administrator, confirmed in an interview with police included in the criminal complaint that he had not given Ms Brown permission to remove the foot. He noted that if a hospice doctor had been asked, he believes they would have approved the procedure since the foot was only connected by a tendon at the time.
Mr Larson had reportedly told the former nurse to stabilise the man’s foot, “because VICTIM was near passing within hours,” the complaint said.
“He stated that VICTIM lingered longer than expected and it became a couple of days and Brown believed it was the right thing to do,” the complaint read, according to CBS News.
Mr Larson and another one of the nurses believed that the man had not experienced pain while the procedure took place, the complaint says.
In another account, a nurse who claims to have witnessed the amputation told police that she saw the 62-year-old man grip Ms Brown’s hand as the foot was amputated. Another colleague told authorities that she spoke with the victim after the procedure and he confirmed that he had felt everything during the operation, Insider reported.
The criminal complaint notes that many of the nurses who worked with Ms Brown believed that the 38-year-old had plans to preserve the man’s amputated foot, claiming that she had spoken about taxidermy at her home before.
Some of the nurses interviewed went on to claim that their co-worker had plans to display the taxidermized foot with a sign that read, “Wear your boots kids,” as an advisory for dressing appropriately in below-freezing conditions.
The complaint included an interview with the accused healthcare worker, KSTP reported. In that interview, there was a section where authorities wrote that “Brown had no doctor’s order to conduct an amputation” and “she stated that she did not have any authorization to remove” his foot.
“Administrators of the nursing home agreed that it was outside of the scope of Brown’s practice to conduct such a procedure and a doctor’s order was necessary prior to any amputation,” the criminal complaint ended.
Ms Brown is due in court on 6 December and if convicted, each of the charges she is facing carry a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison.
