Veterans’ Home Leaders Charged With Mishandling Coronavirus Outbreak That Left 76 Dead

The superintendent and former medical director of a Massachusetts veterans’ home face criminal neglect charges after a coronavirus outbreak at the facility led to the deaths of dozens of residents.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced the indictments of Holyoke Soldiers’ Home superintendent Bennett Walsh and former medical director Dr. David Clinton on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported. The indictments follow an investigation into the deaths of 76 residents of the veterans’ home during a coronavirus outbreak.

The Soldiers’ Home is a state-run facility established in 1952 that provides care and assistance to veterans that has been under investigation since April, when Healey’s office said it learned of issues surrounding coronavirus infection control at the veterans’ home, according to a New York Times report.

The attorney general’s office said investigators found staff at the veterans’ home had combined two dementia wards with 42 total residents of varying COVID-19 infection status, increasing coronavirus exposure, according to the New York Times. In addition, residents who tested positive or were symptomatic were placed six to a room that typically held only four.

If staff believed a resident to be asymptomatic, they were reportedly placed in nine beds in the veterans’ home dining room, “a few feet apart from each other” and next to the room that housed infected patients.

A June independent report found “substantial errors and failures by the home’s leadership that likely contributed to the death toll during the outbreak,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

The 174-page report depicted a facility in that had fallen into chaos, the New York Times reported.

One veterans’ home employee was quoted in the report as saying it “felt like it was moving the concentration camp, we were moving these unknowing veterans off to die.”

Walsh and Clinton each have been charged with five counts of permitting bodily injury to an elderly or disabled person and five counts of permitting neglect or mistreatment of an elderly or disabled person.

“We began this investigation on behalf of the families who lost loved ones under tragic circumstances and to honor these men who bravely served our country,” Ms. Healey said in a statement.

However, Walsh’s counsel said his client had relied on medical professionals’ opinions to guide his decisions, and said Healey was “scapegoating” Walsh.

Walsh “was on the front lines trying his best to do whatever he could to help the Veterans of the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, including asking for help from state officials and the National Guard, which arrived much too late,” his attorney said.

There has already been some fallout for those involved with running the veterans’ home during the coronavirus outbreak. 

The secretary of the state’s Department of Veterans’ Services has resigned, and federal prosecutors have launched an investigation, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In addition, the family of a Korean War veteran who died of COVID-19 while living at the facility has filed a class action lawsuit seeking $176 million.

Joseph Sniadach died April 27 after being diagnosed with COVID-19, according to the class action lawsuit.

From the time of that diagnosis until he died, Sniadach “experienced conscious pain and suffering,” the class action lawsuit states.

Sniadach’s estate alleges his and other veterans’ 14th Amendment rights were violated when the veterans’ home failed to protect them or see that they had “minimally adequate medical and nursing care.”

“The defendants’ acts and omissions shock the conscience,” the class action lawsuit says.

Do you think the superintendent and former medical director of the Holyoke Soldiers Home should be held accountable for the residents’ deaths? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

The Holyoke Soldiers’ Home Coronavirus Outbreak Class Action Lawsuit is Paul Sniadach, et al. v. Bennett Walsh, et al., Case No. 3:20-cv-30115, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

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