Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

On Monday evening, July 17, 2006, Dr. Anna Pou is arrested by a team led by Rider; she is booked for the second-degree murder of four Memorial hospital patients. Pou is released on $100,000 bond. Nurses Landry and Budo are also arrested. Tenet will pay for their defense but also fires them. 

The next day at a press conference, Attorney General Charles Foti says: “We’re talking about people that pretended that maybe they were God” (334). He continues: “This is not euthanasia. This is plain-and-simple homicide” (334). 

Pou’s attorney, Richard Simmons, holds a press conference, where he reminds the press that formal charges must be brought by the New Orleans district attorney. He sidesteps questions about euthanasia with a simple dismissal—“There’s no criminal conduct”(336)—and maintains that his client is completely innocent. He defends Tenet, insisting that “the hospital company had rescued patients from Memorial and the state had not” (336). 

There is plenty of blame to go around for the tragedy, including poor planning, defective levees, lack of resources, turf battles, and communication breakdowns. Reports of looting and other crimes, which led to orders to many first responders to abandon their posts, turn out to have been exaggerated.