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Hub VA death
mystery: Patient reportedly smothered with pillow
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=127005
By Laurel J. Sweet
Monday, February 20, 2006 - Updated: 03:36
AM EST
Boston police are investigating the
death of a patient who was reportedly smothered with a pillow sometime
yesterday at the VA Boston Healthcare System’s West Roxbury campus.
No one was under arrest and the death had not officially been
declared a homicide as of early last night.
The deceased, who the Herald has learned had a roommate, was
found late yesterday morning at the sprawling facility on the VFW
Parkway and pronounced dead by hospital staff. Investigators and
crime-scene analysts were seen both inside and outside the hospital’s
nationally renowned spinal cord injury wing, but it was unclear exactly
where the body was discovered.
Neither the victim’s age nor gender were immediately released and
reporters were banished from the federal property by campus police.
Diane Keefe, spokeswoman for the VA Boston Healthcare System,
released the following statement:
“On Sunday, Feb. 19, an unexpected death occurred at the West
Roxbury campus of the VA Boston Healthcare System.
“As some of the circumstances surrounding this death are
unexplained, the Boston police were contacted and, because this is a
federal facility, the FBI was also contacted. Both agencies are on site
conducting a preliminary investigation. At this time, we are not
releasing any more information regarding this event as it is under
investigation by the authorities.”
FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz confirmed her agency sent an
evidence response team to the hospital, but said the probe had been
turned over to Boston police.
Boston police spokesman Officer John Boyle said his department
was called to the hospital at 11:54 a.m.
“Investigators from the Boston Police Homicide Unit are the lead
investigators,” Boyle confirmed in a written statement, “and are
currently investigating the circumstances of this patient’s death.”
Thomas G. Kelley, the state’s secretary of veterans services,
learned of the baffling death from a Herald reporter. Kelley said both
the circumstances and the hospital setting sounded “unusual.”
But it is definitely not a first.
Five years ago, Kristen Gilbert, a nurse dubbed “the angel of
death” by her colleagues, was convicted by a federal jury for the
murders of four men and the attempted murders of two others at the
Northampton Veterans Affairs Medical Center in 1995 and 1996.
Gilbert, a so-called healthcare serial killer, induced fatal
cardiac arrest in the patients by injecting them with a heart stimulant.
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