Following an eight-day trial in April, a jury convicted Raynaldo Rivera Ortiz Jr. on five counts of intentional adulteration of a drug, four counts of tampering with consumer products resulting in serious bodily injury, and one count of tampering with a consumer product.
The 60-year-old was sentenced on Wednesday by Chief U.S. District Judge David Godbey, who found that Ortiz caused the death of his colleague. The judge said his other acts were “tantamount to attempted murder.”
According to the DOJ, from May to August 2022, several patients at Baylor, Scott & White SurgiCare in North Dallas experienced cardiac emergencies during routine procedures that were performed by various doctors.
Roughly one month after the unexplained cardiac emergencies began, an anesthesiologist who had worked at the same practice died after using an IV bag to treat herself for dehydration, the DOJ said.
Shortly after the anesthesiologist’s death, an 18-year-old patient was rushed to an intensive care unit in a critical condition during a routine sinus surgery. Doctors then began to suspect that the IV bags could be tainted.
Tests on the IV bag used during the sinus patient’s surgery revealed it contained bupivacaine, a nerve-blocking agent; epinephrine, a stimulant; and lidocaine, an anesthetic.
The DOJ said the cocktail of drugs could have caused the teenager’s symptoms, which included very high blood pressure, cardiac dysfunction, and pulmonary edema.
Testing on the IV bag also led to the discovery of a puncture in the plastic shell around it, the DOJ said.
Prosecutors said at trial that Ortiz injected saline bags used for the IV drips with the cocktail of drugs before placing them into a warming bin at the facility.
He then waited for them to be used in surgeries conducted by his colleagues, knowing their patients would experience dangerous complications, they said.
Video footage also captured Ortiz repeatedly taking IV bags out of the warming bin and replacing them shortly thereafter, just before they were taken into operating rooms where patients experienced complications.
Doctors at Baylor, Scott & White SurgiCare also testified in court that the medical emergencies occurred shortly after new IV bags were hung up during the procedures.
Prosecutors noted that multiple medical emergencies happened at the same time that Ortiz was facing disciplinary action due to an alleged medical mistake made at one of his surgeries. Ortiz was at risk of losing his medical license due to the disciplinary action, they said.
The Texas Medical Board suspended Ortiz’s license in September 2022; the same month he was arrested.
At Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, patients and their families testified about the “life-altering” pain they had endured.
The son of one victim told the court that his son, 10, no longer trusts doctors because “a doctor tried to kill Pops.”
Dr. John Kaspar, the husband of the doctor who died after treating her dehydration with a tainted bag, told the court that the image of his wife’s “lifeless eyes” would never leave him. She was “the strongest woman” he’d ever met, he said.
In a statement following Ortiz’s sentencing, U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton said the disgraced doctor “acted no better than an armed assailant spraying bullets indiscriminately into a crowd.”
Ortiz “wielded an invisible weapon, a cocktail of heart-stopping drugs, concealed inside an IV bag designed to help patients heal,” and essentially “attacked unconscious patients lying on an operating table” on at least nine separate occasions, she said.
“I am so proud of our office’s work in bringing Dr. Ortiz to justice and bringing a measure of solace to his victims and their families,” Simonton said.
The Epoch Times contacted Ortiz’s attorney for comment but received no reply by publication time.
