Grosse Pointe nurse sentenced to prison for stealing fentanyl from ER

• A Grosse Pointe Park nurse was sentenced to 2 years in jail for stealing fentanyl from a hospital.
• The nurse admitted to changing the stolen painkiller with saline resolution and administering it to sufferers.
• He pleaded responsible to tampering with the fentanyl vials to help a private drug habit that started after a snowboarding accident.
• Prosecutors argued he intentionally tortured sufferers to keep away from being caught, whereas his protection highlighted his lengthy profession and habit issues.

A Grosse Pointe Park nurse will go to federal jail for 2 years for tampering with vials of fentanyl. She admits that he stole the highly effective painkiller from a hospital and used it to help his private drug habit.

Maybe extra alarming, federal prosecutors stated, is what he did with the empty vials subsequent: He threw them away, or crammed them with saline resolution and positioned them again within the hospital provide, realizing they’d be injected into sufferers needing ache aid.

“The quilt-up was far worse than the unique crime. He may have stolen fentanyl, used the medicine and disposed of the vials at any alternative,” U.S. Legal professional Wayne Pratt argued in a sentencing memo, insisting the tampering was “deliberate and calculated” as a result of “he needed to keep away from getting caught.”

“So he uncovered sufferers to the chance of extreme untreated ache and illness,” Pratt continued. “(He) was keen to torture sufferers with untreated ache to maintain his job as a nurse, his nursing license and his snug life in Grosse Pointe Park.”

Travis Eskridge, 54, of Grosse Pointe Park, a married father of twins who labored as a nurse within the emergency room at Ascension St. John’s Hospital, was sentenced on Tuesday, Nov. 25, by U.S. District Courtroom Decide Susan DeClercq. He had beforehand pleaded responsible to eradicating fentanyl from the hospital’s fentanyl vials in the summertime of 2022 and utilizing the painkiller to help his private behavior.

He additionally admitted filling the empty vials with saline resolution and injecting it into sufferers or throwing them away.

“It is a reprehensible crime,” stated U.S. Legal professional Jerome Gorgan Jr. upon announcement of the decision. “No medical skilled ought to torture a affected person. I thank the hospital and FDA investigators for his or her work in exposing this crime.”

Prosecutors had requested the decide to condemn Eskridge to 46 months in jail, or practically 4 years, whereas his legal professional had requested for probation.

The decide struck a center floor, concluding {that a} two-year jail sentence was ample punishment for a nurse who served 20 years within the medical discipline after which grew to become hooked on fentanyl after a snowboarding accident, utilizing his job to help his habit.

In line with the federal government, Eskridge’s scheme lasted from Might 2022 by August 2022, when FDA investigators found the theft, prompting Eskridge’s speedy firing.

In line with a sentencing memo filed by his legal professional, Harold Gurewitz, Eskridge was confronted by hospital workers on August 10, 2022, after a vial with a leaking stopper was found in a hospital storage system. He acknowledged duty for his habits, acknowledged that he wanted assist together with his habit and “virtually instantly” admitted himself to an inpatient therapy program adopted by outpatient therapy,” the memo stated.

Gurewitz urged the decide to indicate mercy to Eskridge, considering his 20 years of working as a nurse, and the quite a few letters from mates and medical colleagues describing him as a caring, competent and devoted medical skilled.

Extra: Feds: Lady pleads for drug distribution after three Grosse Pointe Woods residents overdose

As one ER physician wrote, Eskridge “is without doubt one of the finest nurses I’ve ever labored with and that claims loads: I’ve been training emergency medication for over 15 years and have been to 5 completely different emergency rooms and encountered so many nurses.” He described Travis as expert, steadfast with the particular instinct to know “what the affected person wanted.”

His spouse, Andrea Eskridge, a nurse-midwife on the College of Michigan, additionally portrayed him as a faithful household man to their six-year-old twins and her ailing father.

However the prosecutor additionally begged the decide to take his felony facet under consideration, arguing that he was an informed, privileged man who had no excuse for doing what he did, drug habit or not.

“Eskridge did not simply need medicine. He additionally needed to maintain his job, his revenue, his license and his standing,” Pratt argued in courtroom paperwork, insisting he “continued to work within the hospital emergency room whereas underneath the affect of the fentanyl he stole,” and was “keen to deprive struggling sufferers of ache aid to guard himself.”

“That habits is particularly heinous for a licensed medical skilled,” wrote Pratt, who urged the decide to not go under sentencing tips and to take his “privileged” background under consideration. “His childhood in Ann Arbor seems to have been economically and socially privileged. He acquired an training, labored as a nurse, married, raised kids, and in any other case functioned effectively in society,” Pratt writes. “His historical past of substance abuse, his present restoration and his expressions of help will not be uncommon or extraordinary sufficient to warrant a downward departure.”

Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com