Medford police arrest former nurse accused of diverting liquid fentanyl, injecting patients with non-sterile tap water

MEDFORD, Ore. (KGW/KTVZ) — A former southern Oregon nurse now faces criminal charges after she allegedly diverted drugs and replaced them with non-sterile tap water, resulting in a number of patients developing serious infections, KGW reported.

The Medford Police Department confirmed Thursday that it had arrested 36-year-old Dani Marie Schofield, previously an ICU nurse at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford.

Police have been tight-lipped thus far about the case, though news broke early this year that they were investigating allegations that patients had been injected with tap water at Asante. In February, the family of a patient who died in 2022 sued the hospital, alleging that one of these injections introduced an infection that caused the patient's death.

According to MPD's statement on Thursday, police were first contacted by Asante officials in early December 2023. Hospital staff were concerned about a rising number of central line infection cases among patients. An internal Asante investigation concluded that all of these cases involved patients in the Intensive Care Unit, MPD said, and occurred within a specific date range.

The hospital determined that Schofield, an ICU nurse, had access to each of the victims. Before Schofield "left Asante in July 2023," there were concerns that she'd been diverting liquid fentanyl for her own use and replacing it with tap water. Police did not elaborate on the circumstances of Schofield's departure from Asante.

Oregon State Board of Nursing records show Schofield's license was restricted by a Nov. 22, 2023 disciplinary order in which she agreed to stop practicing pending completion of an investigation.

Investigators with Medford police spoke with Schofield early on in the investigation, pored over volumes of hospital records and interviewed almost 100 people, including doctors, nurses and patients.

On June 12, the Jackson County District Attorney's office convened a grand jury to review the case. The jury approved an indictment for Schofield on 44 counts of second-degree assault under Oregon's Measure 11 statute.

Each charge on the 44-count indictment corresponds to a different named individual, suggesting that investigators were able to conclude that they were each injected with tap water instead of fentanyl.

Medford police said the assault charges arose from evidence that Schofield's alleged drug diversion "resulted in injury to impacted patients," that the infections happened between July 2022 and July 2023 and only occurred in the ICU. Despite that, the agency concluded that no patient deaths could be directly linked to the tap water injections.

"MPD recognizes that there has been substantial public interest surrounding this case," the agency said. "After review of hospital records, patient records and pathology reports, MPD consulted with multiple medical experts, who each agreed that questionable deaths associated with this case could not be directly attributed to the infections."

KGW's news partner KOBI reported in January that, according to hospital sources and family members who spoke to the station, as many as nine patients died after being injected with tap water.