Nursing home owners booked in 34 deaths
From NOLA.com (“everything New Orleans”):
The owners of a St. Bernard Parish nursing home where 34 residents diedduring Hurricane Katrina were arrested Tuesday and booked withnegligent homicide for allegedly failing to evacuate the home despitegrave warnings about the storm’s power and an offer by parish officials to send buses, state Attorney General Charles Foti said.
Mable B. Mangano, 62, and her husband, Salvador A. Mangano Sr., 65,turned themselves in Tuesday afternoon and were booked on warrants for34 counts of negligent homicide, Foti said.The couple own St. Rita’s Nursing Home near Poydras, where Katrina’smassive storm surge flooded the one-story building to the ceiling in 30minutes, overwhelming bed-ridden patients in one of the deadlieststorm-related incidents. The Manganos’ attorney, James A. Cobb of New Orleans, said his clients are innocent.”It’s ridiculous to arrest these two people considering the problemswith the evacuation at all levels of the government,” he said. As the hurricane raged Aug. 29, neighbors and firefighters rescuedabout two dozen of the nursing home’s residents, many of whom werefloated out on their mattresses. But the waters rose too quickly tosave the rest, Foti said.