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Hospital's 'Man In Green' Baffles Police

Hospital's 'Man In Green' Baffles Police image
Parent Issue
Day
9
Month
October
Year
1977
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
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Hospital's 'Man In Green' Baffles Police

By John Barton

POLICE REPORTER

DEARBORN — The search continues here for a man wearing green hospital garb who is believed responsible for giving an unauthorized injection that caused a patient to stop breathing.

A week ago. 60-year-old James A. Smith of Romulus told his doctors that an Oriental-looking man wearing a green surgical gown and a white coat walked into his room at Oakwood Hospital and gave him a shot in the hip.

Minutes later. Smith, who suffers chronic emphysema and a genital inflammation. began to have difficulty breathing. His hospital roommate, who says he saw the man give Smith the injection, noticed Smith's difficulty and called for help. Doctors and nurses quickly administered oxygen. Smith was revived, and apparently suffered no lasting ill effects.

THE INCIDENT HAS had repercussions in Ann Arbor because of the mysterious series of breathing failures two years ago among patients at the Ann Arbor Veterans Administration Hospital

Two former nurses at the Fuller Road facility were convicted in July of using the muscle paralyzing drug Pavulon to poison five patients. One of the men the women were convicted of poisoning told investigators that a man wearing green hospital clothing gave him an injection moments before a breathing failure.

Dearborn police, who are probing the Oakwood incident, refuse to speculate on possible links to the attacks at the Ann Arbor VA Hospital.

"This is a ver complicated and confusing case." One Dearborn detective said. "All I can tell you is that we are looking at a number of different angles. Whether they may lead us to Ann Arbor is something I can't comment on. "

Sunday. October 9, 1977

THE INVESTIGATION became even more confusing earlier this week.

Two laboratories which conducted tests on blood and urine samples taken from Smith's body reached different conclusions.

One lab. the Michigan Cancer Foundation in Detroit, told hospital officials it was able to isolate “a foreign organic substance" in the fluid samples. At the same time, the lab said its scientists were unable to identify the substance.

The samples were shipped off to the Michigan State Police crime lab in Lansing where it was hoped that more extensive tests could be performed.

State Police technicians analyzed , the samples, but concluded there was "absolutely nothing abnormal'' about them.

"I don't exactly know where this leaves us.'' said the Dearborn detective. "I am told the tests will continue.

“In the meantime." he added, "we are still talking to everybody we can. and we are still trying to come up with a good composite drawing of the man who gave the shot. ''

POLICE ARE also hampered because over 70 Oriental physicians are on the Oakwood staff or have privileges at the hospital. A score or more persons of Oriental descent work at other jobs in the hospital

"It's puzzling and upsetting." comment a hospital spokeswoman.

“We've taken some extra security precautions, but this is a public building. and you just can't keep everybody out — people still get sick and they’ve got to be helped. Meanwhile, hospital authorities say the attack on Smith - if that is what it was — appears to have been an isolated incident, although Smith has experienced, since he has been at the hospital, at least two other episodes of breathing difficulties.

“But hell's bells." an investigator shrugged, “the man has emphysema — that means he has difficulty breathing almost all the time."

Hospital authorities also say there have been no sudden increase in breathing failures or deaths, and they do not believe the problem is the same as occurred in Ann Arbor.

During the summer of 1975. there were 51 reported episodes among 35 patients for whom there appeared to be no sound medical reason to have stopped breathing. Most of those patients. authorities believe, were given deliberate injections of Pavulon. a potent. fast-acting muscle-relaxing drug that leaves breathing muscles totally limp and paralyzed.

“But." said a hospital spokesman, “there is no indication whatever here that a muscle relaxant was involved. But we are puzzled. Very puzzled."