JURIST - Paper Chase: Louisiana AG charges nursing home operators for Katrina deaths

[JURIST] Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti [official website] announced Tuesday that he had filed 34 charges of negligent homicide against the husband and wife co-owners of a nursing home in St. Bernard Parish near New Orleans where 34 people drowned [NYT report] in flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina [JURIST news archive]. Foti said St. Rita's Nursing Home had an evacuation plan that was not implemented even though local officials had set aside buses to pick up the residents, and that the proprietors "didn't follow the standard of care of what a reasonable person would follow." Twenty patients were eventually evacuated from the facility by being floated out on mattresses across half a mile of floodwater; several died during transfer or afterwards. Salvador A. Mangano and Mable Mangano, who were being sought by the AG's office last week [press release], turned themselves in to authorities in Baton Rouge prior to announcement of the charges. AP has more. From New Orleans, the Times-Picayune has local coverage.

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