Medical technician David Kwiatkowski was addicted to fentanyl. He had a simple way of getting this legally-controlled opioid, used for severe pain. At hospitals where he worked, he’d take pre-filled syringes of fentanyl, shoot up, refill the syringes with harmless saline, and replace them.
This meant that people in pain were getting pain shots that didn’t help. They stayed in pain because they couldn’t get another shot until the fentanyl they had supposedly been given had supposedly worn off. Nasty.
It gets worse.
David Kwiatkowski. Exeter NH mug shot.
Kwiatkowski got Hepatitis C, a bad disease which is fortunately not easily spread. It’s most often spread by people using IV drugs, or by imperfectly sterilized medical equipment. Such as your medical technician with Hep C shooting up with the needle that will be used on you next. Kwiatkowski found out he had it in June 2010.
Kwiatkowski didn’t quit needle-switching just because he had Hep C. He worked in 18 hospitals in seven states, ending in New Hampshire. He got fired at least 4 times, with people saying mean things about drug abuse and theft. On to the next job! (Perhaps hospitals told him if he moved on, there’d be no trouble. No record.)
In New Hampshire, his behavior again became obvious. He was showing up on the wrong days. All sweaty. Disappearing at odd times. Acting obviously high. Fentanyl was vanishing. But now, also, a high number of new Hep C cases became noticeable. An investigation began, involving the state Public Health Service, the FBI, and the CDC. Wow, hmm, almost all these new cases of Hep C had the exact same strain as Kwiatkowski.
Kwiatkowski started switching needles in 2002. Thousands of people who passed through his hands in various states have yet to be tested. Since Hep C can be asymptomatic until suddenly you have cirrhosis, or suddenly you’re diagnosed with liver cancer that developed from cirrhosis, the extent of the harm is still unclear.
Not to be confused with this David (or Dawid) Kwiatkowski, who sings and whistles and blogs from Poland, and does not steal painkillers from people in agony.
He certainly gave Hep C to some people in Kansas, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
Before sentencing, Kwiatkowski apologized in court. He had just heard statements from about two dozen people whom he had infected, or who were survivors of people who’d died of the Hep C he gave them. One said, “I want to look at the man who killed me.”
Kwiatkowski said he never meant to cause harm, but did because of drug and alcohol addiction.
I do belong in prison. I’m truly sorry for what I’ve done.
There is no excuse for what I’ve done. I know the pain and suffering I have caused.
I never hurt anyone intentionally. I wish I could sit down with the victims and let them see the real me … I’m a kind person. I’m not a violent person.
I don’t blame the families for hating me. I hate myself.
I’m sorry for what I’ve done. I belong in prison.
He was convicted on 16 federal charges and sentenced by a New Hampshire judge to 39 years in prison. He could have gotten 40. The year of freedom was a token of the mercy Kwiatkowski didn’t show, and should have shown, Judge Joseph LaPlante said. “I hope you remember the one year you didn’t get, and try to develop that capacity [for mercy] in yourself.” He also noted that the potential sentence could have been even longer if Kwiatkowski had had a record – if earlier hospitals had treated incidents as crimes, not personnel matters.
His apology convinces me that he’s sorry. He takes responsibility. But.
Saying that he wishes people could see “the real me” and that he’s a “kind person” is the classic “I may do bad things but they don’t mean I’m BAD because I’m really good! In my heart I’m good! I think of myself as good! Don’t judge me by my actions!” defense, which DOES NOT WORK. Here, he has the explanation that he was a drug addict going after drugs. It wasn’t him, it was the monkey on his back, the BAD MONKEY. The monkey‘s not kind. The monkey is hateful.
But he wasn’t a zombie. He was able to maintain daily life, to get work, to perform the rest of his job adequately. He should have been able to say “I am lying to helpless people, I’m stealing painkillers from innocents in agony, and now I’m endangering people’s lives. If I can’t stop, someone has to make me stop. I need to turn myself in.”
Is any apology good enough in a case like this?
One of Kwiatkowski’s victims, Vincent Spinale of Dover, thought it was a good apology. “I like what he said. He made a good speech at the end there. He did say he was sorry for everything.”
I admire Spinale. He’s a forgiving man.
Others were less forgiving. I can’t blame them. They called him serial killer, evil monster, sociopath, coward. Another victim, Bill Rooney, said the sentence was too short. “Another 30 or 40 years as far as I am concerned. He should be tried for murder.”
“He gave me the death penalty, so he should receive the same thing that I have,” said Linwood Nelson.
Kathy Murray, daughter of a victim who died, said the apology was worthless. “I did not think it was genuine, no. I don’t think he can apologize. I don’t think it’s in him.”
Linda Ficken, who was given Hep C by Kwiatkowski, has a sick brother who needs a bone marrow transplant. Because of the hepatitis, she can’t donate marrow to him. “This guy took away my chance, possibly, to save my brother’s life.”
“We’ve got a serial killer here. Turn him over to HR.”
Kwiatkowski cut a path of cruelty, betrayal and death. But he’s not the only one to blame.
Even if it’s a mess to pursue, a single incident of a hospital employee doing a switcheroo like this to get drugs and leave a patient in pain should be prosecuted. Hospitals are supposed to care for people and save lives, not send a conscienceless addict along to the next hospital to deal with.
Kwiatkowski performed many evil acts. He has the inadequate excuse of his addiction. What excuse do the hospitals have?
You are intrinsically not a kind person when you can fail to alleviate pain because, you know, reasons. The core part of an apology is restitution, and …? I’m not seeing it. I could embrace the word “sociopath” for someone in a medical field who knows the disease he has is spread by IV infection…. and still swaps needles.
Also would like to see million dollar penalties to ANY hospital who let him go forward sans a BIG FAT GLARING NOTE in his personnel file. How horrible of them to just let him go and batten off of the next facility. DUH, people. It’s not like a drug addict is going to stop himself.
Distressing similar hospital negligence to the Charles Cullen case.
I looked up the Cullen case. Horrible. His motivation was different from Kwiatkowski’s but as you point out, the hospitals’ behavior was quite similar….
It is a mortal shame he was allowed to go from hospital to hospital… I can’t imagine they didn’t know what was happening. Unfortunately it seems to be the culture in hospital administration to sweep things under the rug, and divest themselves of the problem with as little fanfare as possible. Bastards…
You could compare this to sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, or the Penn State case, or…any number of instances when an individual does something really, really bad and the institutional response is to protect the institution, with little apparent concern for the crimes or their victims. “Oh well, we’ll just (not) handle this internally.”
Apparently this guy is a sociopath as well as an addict, and what he’s done goes way beyond anything an individual can apologize for or make restitution for. Giving him a longer sentence or the death penalty* wouldn’t do much to balance the scales. If all the hospitals that enabled him to keep abusing, infecting and killing their patients and then sent him on his merry way to do the same at other hospitals stepped forward and made their own apologies, that would be nice… but it would be a lot nicer if *they* made restitution to patients, or for that matter got penalized by the appropriate agencies. Is anything like that happening, or likely to happen? —
* This post confused me, because it didn’t say what he WAS convicted of. He wasn’t charged with anything like murder or manslaughter, it turns out. Per CNN, “seven counts of tampering with a consumer product and seven counts of obtaining controlled substances by fraud.” Which does seem grotesquely inadequate, and puts the indignant quotes from victims and families into somewhat better perspective.
You’re right, I should I have said what the charges were. I’m sorry you had to look it up to find out, and grateful you posted it here.
I wish we could have put a big fat note in his file, as Tanita suggests. Unfortunately if I did, that’s a “defamation of character” law suit just waiting to happen. The only thing I can tell H/R is “no, I will not hire him/her back.”
I agree that’s what current hospital practice says. And I don’t suppose it’s a job for H.R., but hospital administrations need to show some spine and REPORT bad people like this to the police (and licensing authorities).
The current practice or tradition is a bad one, and in a few cases enables these dangerous itinerant criminals. Hospitals don’t want to expose themselves to liability, but they need to do the right thing anyway.
SorryWatch heard from a small-animal veterinarian who wrote about a technician substituting saline for an anesthetic (in this case, ketamine):
That happened to us too! We couldn’t understand why it was so hard to get animals under anesthesia (we used it as an IV induction agent), and didn’t catch on until [one vet] noticed someone had switched antihistamine pills for Hycodan [which contains hydrocodone] on a prescription.
We were unable to catch the guy in the act, but when we had a cop come in to describe to the staff what they were going to do to catch the culprit (as a scare tactic), he quit a day later and left town. We had no way to warn others unless we were asked for a reference (we never were).
Drug addicts are a sneaky bunch! I’m not sure they are purely evil, the drug is number one. It’s the part about the Hepatitis that guy spread around that is was so unnecessary.
The hospital part is troubling, and not that simple. Fired employees have rights, and employers are scared of lawsuits. It’s often hard to prove the wrongdoing when drugs are stolen. You can’t go on record as saying to all hospitals “We suspected this person of stealing drugs.” I’m not sure what the solution is, other than better screening (uh oh it’s big brother!).
We considered drug testing all employees after that happened, but our manager pointed out that virtually every employee would flunk, because they all smoked pot.
What this guy did goes so far beyond stealing drugs, or stealing to get drugs. It is on a whole different scale. Blaming the addiction only goes so far.