'I'm not calling 911': Warrants detail charges in death of woman who wandered from CT nursing home

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WINDSOR LOCKS - When an elderly woman who wandered from a nursing home finally was found after more than three hours in sub-freezing cold, a nursing assistant told Windsor Locks police he heard the shift supervisor say, "I'm not calling 911 because we will all go to prison," according to an arrest warrant released Tuesday.

Police on Monday arrested Papy Bibo, 53, of Manchester, the registered nurse in charge at Bickford Health Care Center on Feb. 8, on charges of negligent homicide and tampering with evidence. Also arrested was Uchenna Obi, 46, of Newington, who was working as a certified nursing assistant at Bickford, on charges of first-degree reckless endangerment and tampering with evidence.

Fellow workers told police that Obi, who was responsible for checking on patients through the night, was sleeping in the dining room when Margaret Healey left the building, the warrant for Obi's arrest says.

Video surveillance footage showed that Healey, 93, a Waterbury native who suffered from severe dementia, left the nursing home at about 1:50 a.m. and was not found and brought inside until three hours and 19 minutes later, the warrants said. An ankle bracelet she was wearing that was designed to alert staff if she were to go beyond a perimeter was functioning when police tested it, but it only activated at doors in front of the building, while Healey left through another door that was not connected to the device, police said.

After nursing home staff found Healey outdoors in the snow, they did not call 911 for more than an hour, police said. Healey died of  hypothermia due to environmental exposure, with other significant conditions of hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, and the manner of her death was an accident, according to the state Office of Chief Medical Examiner.

A CNA on duty that morning told police he had joined in the search for Healey when he saw Bibo pulling her into the building on a wheelchair. Although Bibo told police that Healey had a pulse when he found her, the CNA said he checked her pulse and found none, the warrant says. After hearing Bibo say he was not calling 911, the CNA said he left the building, feigning illness, because he "didn't want to be part of this crap," the warrant says.

In an interview with police, Bibo said his delay in calling 911 "was due to many duties he had to overcome after Ms. Healey had been located," the warrant for his arrest says.

"He was adamant that he prioritized Ms. Healey's medical emergency, but that she had Do Not Resuscitate and Do Not Intubate orders and that he had other supervisory duties," according to the warrant.

Asked in an interview with CT Insider in April why he did not call for help immediately, Bibo said Healey "had signs of life" when she was found. Bibo said he tried to save Healey and was not responsible for mistakes that allowed her to go missing for more than three hours.

However, state Long Term Care Ombudsman Mairead Painter said in an interview at the time that an elderly patient wearing only pajamas found outdoors in temperatures that ranged from -1 to zero degrees obviously was in medical distress. 

"Signs of life are not a reason not to call," she said.

Another CNA told police she saw Healey blink her eyes after she was brought indoors, but Dr. Gregory Vincent of the medical examiner's office told police "it was highly unlikely that Ms. Healey was alive" when she was found, the warrant says. However, Vincent said he could not officially refute staff statements that Healey had a pulse and blinked her eyes, the arrest warrant says.

Obi had listed Healey as asleep in her room during a bed check at 3 a.m., Detective Heriberto Resto wrote in the arrest warrant affidavit. Told that was impossible because video surveillance footage showed Healey had left the building more than an hour earlier, Obi said she believed Healey was in her bed because she saw her walker by the bed and noticed that a blanket she put by the patient's feet earlier still was in the same position, Resto wrote.

"She admitted that she did not visually verify if she was in bed sleeping," Resto wrote.

He wrote that Obi, who knew Healey had a history of wandering, "showed extreme indifference to Ms. Healey by intentionally sleeping in the Bickford dining room during her shift."

Bibo also showed extreme indifference "by waiting 1 hour and 10 minutes before calling 911," Resto wrote. His conduct "was a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable registered nurse would have administered in the situation," the detective wrote.

Bickford since has closed after patients were moved to other nursing homes.  Based on a 14-count "statement of charges" from the state health department, state Social Services Commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves found in a March 10 summary order "that the health, safety and welfare of patients in the Facility is jeopardized." Those counts included a failure to notify the police department within 15 minutes of a resident being discovered missing and failure to adequately supervise a resident with a dementia who had been identified as a "wander risk."

The state Board of Examiners for Nursing this month suspended Bibo's license, finding that he "failed to conform to the accepted standards of the nursing profession" after Healey went missing.

Bibo, of Manchester, was released on a $25,000 bond and Obi, a Newington resident, was released on a $10,000 non-surety bond, police said. Both are scheduled to appear at state Superior Court in Hartford on Aug. 7.

"The whole situation was unfortunate. It was preventable," Windsor Locks Detective Sgt. Jeff Lampson said in an interview Tuesday afternoon.

Read this story on ctinsider.com