CLARKSBURG — A former nursing assistant at the Clarksburg VA Medical Center pleaded guilty to killing seven veterans by injecting them with insulin.
Reta Mays, 46, of Harrison County, entered that plea Tuesday afternoon to a federal information before U.S. District Judge Thomas Kleeh in Clarksburg.
The charges and plea follow a two-year investigation that began after the VA Medical Center reported several suspicious deaths. Mays had access to the veterans’ hospital rooms. She wasn’t supposed to have access to insulin.
The federal information document was unsealed Tuesday morning.
In an information, the prosecutor presents the details of the case with the consent of the defendant, rather than take the case to a grand jury for an indictment.
Mays pleaded guilty to seven counts of second-degree murder and one count of assault with intent to murder. She faces life in prison for each count of second-degree murder and 20 years in prison for assault with intent to commit murder. She’ll be sentenced later.
She admitted to killing veterans Robert Edge Sr., Robert Kozul, Archie Edgell, George Shaw, a patient identified only as W.A.H., Felix McDermott and Raymond Golden, and to also administering insulin to “R.R.P.,” another patient who was not diabetic, with intent to kill him.
The information does not address a motive.
Tuesday the first time Mays has been publicly identified by law enforcement.
Authorities for months described a person of interest, a former nursing assistant who had access to the rooms of the veterans who died at the hospital.
Autopsies on exhumed bodies pointed to insulin injections that weren’t needed. The veterans died of low blood sugar level, severe hypoglycemia, which would be caused by the insulin shots.
There have already been a number of civil lawsuits filed by families in connection with the deaths.
Mays began working at the veterans hospital in June 2015. She was removed from her job in July 2018.
Federal prosecutors said the hospital did not require nursing assistants to be certified or licensed.
Mays, the information alleges, “was not qualified or authorized to administer medicine, including insulin.”
She worked the 7:30 p.m. to 8 a.m. shift in Ward 3A, which housed fragile patients who were not well enough to be discharged but whose conditions did not require the intensive care unit.
Mays’ job as a nursing assistant required her to measure patients’ vital signs, test blood glucose levels and sit one-on-one with patients who required observation.
Some families of veterans who died under mysterious circumstances later recalled having met someone who matched her description.
Gina Wilkins, daughter of Navy veteran Russ Posey, in an interview last year, recalled conversations with a hospital employee who matched the description of a “person of interest.”
“She just came in and told me it was an honor serving my dad, which I thought was very nice. I didn’t think very much about it at the time,” Wilkins said.
“When she came back on shift, she did say ‘Oh, you’re still here,’ which kind of caught me off guard.”
By June 2018, a doctor at the veterans hospital told a supervisor about concerns that a number of patients had suffered crashing blood sugar levels, hypoglycemia, unexpectedly and died. Several of the patients who died were not diabetic, raising particular suspicions.
Hypoglycemia can result in seizures, coma and death.
Some families of the veterans who died stepped forward over the past year, describing similar circumstances and shock that their loved ones had gone to the hospital for medical help and died under mysterious circumstances.
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