Nurse Allegedly Killed 2 Women with Fatal Insulin Doses, Sent Flowers and Card to Victim’s Family: Suit
Pennsylvania authorities have charged former nurse Heather Pressdee with attempting to kill at least 19 patients
Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General
Heather PressdeeA former Pennsylvania nurse charged with killing at least two nursing home patients sent flowers and a card to one of her alleged victim’s families days after she allegedly killed the 78-year-old woman by unnecessarily injecting her with two large doses of insulin, according to a lawsuit
Heather Pressdee, 41, was arrested in May 2023 in connection with killing two of her nursing home patients using insulin injections. State investigators later filed charges against Pressdee in connection with attempting to kill 19 other patients at five different care facilities between the years of 2020 and 2023.
Two families of Pressdee’s alleged victims filed wrongful death lawsuits last week against the Sunnyview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Butler, Pa., claiming liability and negligence regarding Pressdee and her patients’ “unusual” deaths.
Related: Pa. Nurse Charged with Killing 2 Patients Confesses to 19 Other Attempted Murders, Say Police
One of the lawsuits, reviewed by PEOPLE, claims that Pressdee killed 78-year-old Irene Simons while her daughter Elizabeth was visiting her mother at the facility in January 2023.
The lawsuit alleges that when Elizabeth left the room “for a short period of time,” Pressdee gave the great grandmother “60 units of short-acting insulin” which led to Simons having “irregular and labored” breathing shortly afterwards. Elizabeth asked Pressdee to check on her mother while she went to the bathroom. When the daughter returned, Pressdee informed Elizabeth her mother had died while she was briefly out of the room, causing the daughter to “uncontrollably” break down in tears and crawl into bed with her dead mother, according to the lawsuit.
“Heather Pressdee did not then leave the room, but rather stayed in the room/doorway and lingered, watching [Elizabeth] grieve and lay in bed with her mother,” the lawsuit claims.
Later, Pressdee sent flowers and a card to the funeral home where Simons was being memorialized. The handwritten note said “In loving memory of Irene Elizaebth (Novalis) Simons. She will be missed. Sorry for your loss. Love Heather (Sunnyview),” the lawsuit alleges.
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In total, the lawsuit alleges Pressdee admitted to investigators that she administered a total of 120 units of the short-acting insulin in 60-unit doses to Simons each time her daughter left the room, despite Simons being non-diabetic.
Simons was the third patient to die under Pressdee’s care within three months, the lawsuit alleges. And six weeks after Simons’ death, the lawsuit alleges another three residents “died unexpectedly under unusual circumstances” while under Pressdee’s care. “Amazingly, Defendant Sunnyview did nothing to investigate or report any of these highly suspicious and unusual deaths,” the lawsuit alleges.
Related: Pa. Nurse Accused of Killing Patients with Excessive Insulin, Saying Man Was 'Better Off Dead'
PEOPLE previously reported last November that Pressdee, who was charged in relation to two patients’ deaths in 2022, had confessed to attempting to kill at least 19 other patients.
“Pressdee is accused of administering excessive amounts of insulin to these patients, some of whom were diabetic and required insulin, and some of whom were not. In total, seventeen patients died who had been cared for by Pressdee,” the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office said in a press release at the time.
“It is hard to comprehend how a nurse, trusted to care for her patients, could choose to deliberately and systematically harm them,” Attorney General Michelle Henry said in a statement on Facebook last November. “The damage done to the victims and their loved ones cannot be overstated.”
It is unclear if Pressdee has retained an attorney to speak on her behalf.
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