A Texas anesthesiologist convicted of injecting a breathtaking poison into patients’ IV bags has been sentenced to 190 years in prison.
Raynaldo Riviera Ortiz, Jr., 60, once nicknamed a “medical terrorist,” was convicted of four counts of tampering with consumer products resulting in serious injury, one count of tampering with a consumption and five counts of intentional tampering with a consumer product. drug after an eight-day trial in April last year.
The sentence was handed down by Chief U.S. District Judge David Godbey, who found Ortiz’s actions amounted to attempted murder, and U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton appeared to agree.
“This disgraced doctor acted no better than an armed assailant firing bullets indiscriminately into a crowd. Dr. Ortiz tampered with IV bags at random, seemingly indifferent to who he injured. But he was brandishing a gun invisible, a breathtaking cocktail of drugs, hidden inside an IV bag designed to help patients heal,” Simonton said.
Texas doctor convicted of poisoning patients by putting dangerous drugs in IV bags
Dr. Raynaldo Ortiz, left, and a screenshot of surveillance footage of him allegedly tampering with IV bags that poisoned patients. (WebMD/U.S. State’s Attorney’s Office)
Simonton continued: “On at least nine separate occasions, he essentially attacked unconscious patients lying on an operating table and even killed a colleague. I am very proud of our firm’s work to bring Dr. Ortiz to justice and provide some comfort to his victims and their families.”
During the trial, doctors testified that they were confused when their patients’ blood pressure suddenly increased, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. After reviewing medical records, a common thread in each incident was that these emergencies occurred after new IV bags were hung.
Evidence presented in the trial showed that patients at Surgicare North Dallas suffered cardiac emergencies during routine medical procedures in 2022. The evidence showed that this was not done by any specific doctor.
TEXAS DOCTOR ACCUSED OF POISONING PATIENTS ASKS FOR BAIL, GIVES NEW DETAILS ON DOG SHOOTING
Dr. AS Raynaldo Rivera Ortiz (left) was found guilty of contaminating IV bags. Mélanie Kaspar (right). (Dallas Police Department/Obituary)
After these unexplained emergencies, a fellow anesthesiologist treated herself for dehydration using one of the contaminated bags and died that day. Her husband, Dr. John Kaspar, told the court that the memory of seeing his wife’s “lifeless eyes” still haunts him and will never leave him. She was “my life” and “the strongest woman” he ever met, he said.
At the sentencing, families and patients spoke of the “life-changing” pain they endured at the hands of Ortiz. The son of one victim said that because of what happened, his 10-year-old son no longer trusted doctors because “a doctor tried to kill Pops.”
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Another victim said that after the cardiac incident she woke up feeling “all chewed up” and had not been the same since.
Ortiz waived his rights and was not present to hear the sentence or his victims’ impact statements.
