Former NC nurse accused of killing 2 patients, nearly killing another, DA says
A former nurse is accused of killing two patients using insulin and nearly killing a third, the Forsyth County District Attorney said in a news conference Tuesday.
Johnathan Howard Hayes, who is a registered nurse and worked at Atrium Health’s Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, is charged with two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.
District Attorney Jim O’Neill said Hayes, 47, gave the three patients lethal and near-lethal doses of insulin. O’Neill described him as a “rogue nurse.”
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According to O’Neill:
Gwen Crawford, 61, died on Jan. 8, which was three days after she was dosed. Hayes is charged with murder.
Vickie Lingerfelt, 62, was dosed on Jan. 22. She died five days later. Hayes is charged with another count of murder.
A 62-year-old woman was dosed on Dec. 1, 2021 and survived. Hayes is charged with attempted murder.
Channel 9 has confirmed that Lingerfelt was from the town of Vale in Lincoln County.
O’Neill said he and detectives met in March with Atrium Health officials, who presented details of an investigation that appeared to show that Hayes had injected a lethal dose of insulin into a patient, causing that patient’s death and possibly others. Winston-Salem police took on the investigation and after consulting with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and Winston-Salem police, O’Neill said he found that police had probable cause to charge Hayes. It doesn’t appear that Hayes knew the patients and there’s no apparent motive, O’Neill said. Evidence indicates Hayes acted alone, he said.
Police said Hayes was arrested Tuesday. Hayes was listed in the Forsyth County jail with no bond.
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He was ordered held without bond at a first appearance Wednesday, police said. His case was referred to the public defender’s office, but one hasn’t been assigned yet, according to the clerk of the court’s office.
Anyone who believes they’ve been impacted by Hayes can call the Winston-Salem Police Department’s dedicated phone line at 336-757-0357.
‘Forfeited the honor of being called a nurse’
O’Neill, whose wife is a doctor at Atrium Health, stressed that Hayes’ alleged actions don’t reflect the care that the hospital provides.
“Johnathan Hayes has forfeited the honor of being called a nurse,” O’Neill said. “From this day forward, he will be known as a defendant.”
Hayes, who had worked at the hospital at various times over the past 15 years, was fired March 18, Atrium Health spokesman Joe McCloskey said. Hayes had worked at the hospital at various times over the past 15 years.
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When Atrium Health officials learned of these “disturbing events, they reached out to the patients’ families, said Denise Potter, vice president of marketing, communications and media.
“As soon as we identified a deviation from patient care as part of our established safety protocols, we took immediate action to remove the employee from the patient care environment and terminated his employment,” she said. Officials also analyzed safety protocols to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again, Potter said.
Last year, Hayes’ wife, Misty, nominated Johnathan Hayes as a nurse of distinction for the Celebrating Nurses of the Triad special section coordinated by the Winston-Salem Journal, News & Record and the N.C. Nurses Association. In her nomination, Misty Hayes said her husband would make sure patients had everything they needed and knew “that they will be taken good care of,” the Winston-Salem Journal reported.
Hayes had been in nursing for 21 years and worked during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the article.
“The biggest takeaway from the pandemic has been to never take your life for granted,” Hayes said in the article. “Always treat everyone the same as you would want to be treated.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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