Charges in federal court allege a former home health care aide stole prescription drugs meant for an Allegan child who died.
A federal indictment filed Wednesday, April 18, in United States District Court in Grand Rapids charges Kristie Ann Mollohan of Kalamazoo with three counts of tampering with a consumer product. The indictment states “(Mollohan) with reckless disregard for the risk that another person would be placed in danger of death or bodily injury and under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to such risk, did tamper with a consumer product...”
The indictment claims that Mollohan tampered with a bottle of liquid diazepam (valium) that was meant to be dispensed to the boy who died and two other people in the course of her job, replacing it with water.
Allegan city police launched the investigation that led to the charges soon after the boy died.
Patrolman Kris Meade conducted the investigation for the Allegan police and said it was the first child death he’d had to investigate.
“At first it didn’t appear right, but it didn’t seem 100 percent suspicious, because of his medical conditions,” Meade said.
When an autopsy was performed, Meade said, it indicated the amount of medication that was supposed to be in the child’s body was not there at the time of his death.
“His doctor had a recommended amount to be in the body to be quote unquote normal,” Meade said. “After it gets diluted, which was 95 percent diluted, he doesn’t get the recommended amount.
“That can cause seizures and that’s believed to be what happened; that he had a seizure because he didn’t have the right amount of medication in his body.”
Meade said he’d interviewed Mollohan after being told she’d admitted to stealing some of the boy’s medication.
“She would only admit to doing it one time, but it’s clear she did it more than that one time,” Meade said.
He said Mollohan was using the drug herself after stealing it and that she’d said she didn’t know that stealing the drug could harm the boy fatally.
“She said she didn’t know it could be as severe as what it turned out to be,” Meade said.
He investigated the case for about three months, Meade said, and then spent further months speaking to doctors, prosecutors and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, that offered its expertise to help Allegan police investigate.
“The amount that went into this case is probably one of the most thorough investigations I’ve had to do,” Meade said.
After discussions between police, prosecutors and federal officials, the decision was made to pursue the federal charges.
“They had more laws federally that they could charge her under and, we were told, that could be easily proven based on our investigation,” Meade said.
The crime is punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison.
Contact Dan Pepper at dpepper@allegannews.com or at (269) 673-5534.
Editor's note: This is a seperate posting of a story that ran with a misleading term in its headline. It is identical to the one with the headline: "Nurse indicted in child’s death; accused of stealing his meds"
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