A nurse anesthetist at a Texas military hospital may have infected up to 15 patients with a potentially fatal strain of hepatitis C by stealing drugs meant for his patients and "knowingly" passing on his own infection, according to civil and criminal court filings and the report of a federal agency.
According to Daniel Henry, one of the alleged victims, Jon Dale Jones injected drugs meant for Henry into himself and then infected Henry with hepatitis by injecting him with the same needle.
In an indictment made public early this week, federal prosecutors in El Paso said Jones secretly and improperly obtained access to a powerful painkilling drug, fentanyl, earmarked for three patients about to undergo surgery at William Beaumont Army Medical Center and, as a result, infected those patients with hepatitis C, an infectious disease that can lead to liver failure and cancer. The indictment does not address the method of transmission.
The nine-count indictment charges Jones, 45, with assault "resulting in serious bodily injury" and with obtaining a controlled substance "by fraud, deception and subterfuge."
Records filed in a series of civil lawsuits and reviewed by The Times show that an investigation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that an additional 12 patients were infected in the same way and by the same person. Federal officials later added another victim to the list, an infant who they said was apparently infected in utero, according to court filings. All were members of the military or among immediate family.
The indictment charges that Jones "obtained possession of keys from subordinate employees" to access the drugs, which were kept in locked containers and later administered to the victims.
Jones' lawyer, James Darnell, said his client would plead not guilty to the charges. Darnell also said he had information showing that the CDC report was incorrect and that his client was not responsible for infecting all the patients cited.
Civil court documents identified another victim as Matthew Vane, a student at West Point and the son of Michael Vane, then-commanding general at Ft. Bliss, where Beaumont is located. The three victims in the federal indictment, identified only by their initials, were infected between Aug. 6 and Oct. 12, 2004.
The indictment comes after a more than two-year investigation by the FBI.
