Anna Pou and Kristy Johnson

Anna Pou and Kristy Johnson were connected first by the effort to evacuate patients from the LifeCare floor at Memorial Medical Center, then by Johnson’s account of Pou’s conduct during the patients’ final hours. Johnson, LifeCare’s physical medicine director, described discussing the difficult task of moving Emmett Everett with assistant administrator Diane Robichaux. Later, she said, she accompanied Pou toward Everett’s room and witnessed activity around injections on the seventh floor. Her recollections became an important part of the investigation—not a complete account of every patient’s treatment, but a firsthand description of scenes and actions that investigators had struggled to establish.

Working Together to Move Everett

On the morning of September 1, 2005, Johnson and Robichaux tried to work out how Everett, who was very heavy, could be taken out of the hospital. They went to his room to ask how he was feeling. Everett reported dizziness and wondered whether he needed oxygen, although he was already receiving it. He also asked whether the evacuation was ready to begin. Robichaux told him that they were working on it. The exchange placed Johnson in the practical work of trying to move a patient, rather than in the role of a distant observer.

Later that morning, Pou came upstairs and discussed Everett’s prospects with Johnson and his nurse, Andre Gremillion, in a physical therapy charting room. Gremillion was asked to sedate Everett, but left the room crying. He later recalled that Pou told him he need not proceed if he was uncomfortable, adding that her own first experience of this kind had troubled her for years. Gremillion understood the request as a sign that Everett might be given medication to hasten his death. Johnson’s later account provided a separate perspective on the discussion’s next steps: she said she accompanied Pou toward Everett’s room and heard Pou propose telling him that she would give him something to help with dizziness. Johnson could not remember whether Pou then had syringes.

Johnson’s Account of the Room and the Bedside

As they reached Room 7307, a Memorial nurse outside asked Pou whether she wanted company. Pou declined and went into Everett’s room alone, closing the door. Johnson’s recollection establishes the approach to the room and the words Pou intended to use, but it does not establish that Johnson saw what happened inside. That distinction matters: her testimony added a close, contemporaneous account without making her an eyewitness to every act associated with Everett’s care.

Johnson also told investigators that she had seen Pou draw liquid from vials into syringes and had seen Pou and Memorial nurses carrying syringes. She said she escorted health professionals to patients’ bedsides and was present for some injections. Her account therefore linked separate pieces of the seventh-floor scene: preparation of medication, movement among patients, and injections witnessed at particular bedsides. It did not, by itself, identify every person who administered every injection or settle what each dose was intended to do.

One bedside account concerned Wilda McManus, a seventy-year-old LifeCare patient. Johnson said she had earlier walked Wilda’s daughter, Angela, downstairs after Angela was ordered to leave, and reassured her that staff would do everything they could for her mother. Johnson later stood across from Pou at Wilda’s bedside. According to Johnson, Pou told Wilda that she would give her something to make her feel better. Johnson looked at Wilda and spoke to her rather than watching Pou’s hands. Wilda, who was feverish and drifting in and out of consciousness, did not respond. Johnson later recalled Pou saying that Wilda was fighting and that she had needed to give her three doses; Pou’s attorney emphatically denied that Pou had made such a statement.

Johnson’s account also covered Room 7305, where she accompanied a Memorial nurse to see Alice Hutzler. Johnson touched Hutzler’s hand and said a prayer, trying not to watch the nurse’s actions. She nevertheless saw the nurse inject Hutzler’s roommate, Rose Savoie, a ninety-year-old woman with acute bronchitis and a history of kidney problems. Savoie remarked that the injection burned, and Johnson noticed that her arm was puffy. A LifeCare nurse had told investigators that both women had been alert and stable late that morning; Savoie died that afternoon. Johnson’s description of this scene is distinct from her account of Pou at Wilda’s bedside: she reported seeing another nurse inject Savoie, not Pou.

From Colleague to Investigative Witness

Johnson did not give investigators all of these details at the outset. In January, a LifeCare attorney contacted investigator Butch Schafer to say that Johnson remembered more and wanted to share it. Schafer spoke with her by telephone and then informed Virginia Rider, who arranged to interview Johnson herself. The investigators regarded the new information as potentially important because they had lacked an eyewitness account connecting Pou’s words and presence with events involving LifeCare patients. Johnson began with Everett and then described seeing syringes, accompanying medical workers, and being present for some injections. Her account gave the investigation a witness who could describe scenes from inside the seventh-floor patient area.

By Thursday afternoon, Savoie and the other remaining LifeCare patients were dead. Johnson’s account helped investigators understand the sequence and setting of the events, while the work of Memorial pathologist John Skinner and laboratory director David Heikamp supplied separate observations about the dead and their locations. The distinctions among these sources remained important: Johnson described what she personally saw and heard; other evidence was needed to establish timing, drug findings, and their significance.

The Stakes and Limits of the Relationship

The relationship between Pou and Johnson was neither simply one of cooperation nor merely a later clash between a suspect and a witness. In the evacuation’s final hours, they were both present in a hospital trying to move patients under extreme conditions. Johnson’s evidence later placed her alongside Pou at key moments, but it also recorded limits: she did not remember whether Pou had syringes on the way to Everett’s room, did not see what happened behind his closed door, and deliberately looked away from Pou’s hands at Wilda’s bedside. Her account of Savoie concerned a different nurse’s injection.

That combination of proximity and partial view made Johnson’s recollections consequential without making them self-sufficient. She could describe Pou’s stated plan for Everett, Pou’s words to Wilda, the presence of syringes, and specific actions she witnessed. Investigators still had to weigh those observations against patient records, postmortem toxicology, and other testimony. The relationship’s significance lies in this transition: Johnson’s role in trying to get patients out became an evidentiary role in reconstructing what happened to those who remained.