Pennsylvania nurse who gave fatal insulin doses to patients receives life sentence in prison

A nurse from Pennsylvania who gave deadly doses of insulin to patients and admitted to killing three people, has been found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

Heather Pressdee, who is 41 years old, has been sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison, and an additional 380 to 760 years. The sentencing took place in Butler, which is about 48 kilometers north of Pittsburgh. She caused the deaths of 17 patients in five different health facilities from 2020 to 2023, according to prosecutors.

The 22 people who were hurt or killed were between 43 and 104 years old. Pressdee’s coworkers often asked about how she behaved and said she often showed dislike for her patients and made disrespectful comments about them, authorities said.

Pressdee, who could have been sentenced to death, admitted to being guilty of three counts of first-degree murder and 19 counts of attempted murder. In May 2023, she was accused of killing two nursing home patients and hurting another. More looking into what happened showed that she is facing many more accusations. In February, she talked to her lawyers and said she wanted to admit she was guilty.

Pressdee didn’t say much when she went into court and answered most questions with just one word. When her lawyer asked why she was saying she did it, Pressdee said, “Because I did it. ”

The plea hearing was supposed to go on until Friday because many people wanted to talk about the impact the crime had on them, officials said. Some people in court on Thursday said to Pressdee that she was wrong to act like God. They said that even though some of the people she hurt were old or very sick, none of them wanted to die.

Pressdee ignored the speakers and didn’t respond to their comments, even when one of them said a bad word that made people in the courtroom clap.

Another person said in court: “She is not ill. ” She is not crazy. She is very evil. Please rewrite this text using simpler words. “I saw Satan’s face when she killed my dad in the morning. ”

Prosecutors said that Pressdee from Harrison gave too much insulin to 22 patients, even some who didn’t have diabetes. She usually gave insulin during the night when there were fewer staff and emergencies did not require immediate hospital care. Many patients died shortly after getting the insulin, or later on.

She wasn’t allowed to work as a nurse early last year because of some legal problems.

Court papers show that Pressdee sent messages to her mom from April 2022 to May 2023 talking about being unhappy with her patients and coworkers, and mentioning the possibility of hurting them. She also said she had the same problems with people she met at restaurants and other places.

Pressdee has a record of being in trouble for being mean to patients and/or staff at every job. This led to her either quitting or getting fired, according to prosecutors. Starting in 2018, Pressdee worked at a few nursing homes and facilities in western Pennsylvania for a short time, according to the records.

Other people who work in healthcare have been found guilty of causing the death of patients. One of them is William Davis, a nurse from Texas. He was found guilty of killing four patients by injecting air into their arteries after they had heart surgery. He was found guilty and given the death penalty, but he is now trying to prove that he is not guilty. Another nurse named Charles Cullen murdered at least 29 nursing home patients in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Some experts think he may have killed even more people.