Kristy Johnson

Kristy Johnson was LifeCare’s physical medicine director and supervised its rehabilitation-therapy programs at Memorial Medical Center. During the hospital’s Hurricane Katrina crisis, her work took her from helping patients and relatives reach evacuation boats to assisting with the movement of a patient who could not readily be evacuated. Afterward, Johnson became an important witness in the investigation of patient deaths. Her changing account is central to her role in the narrative: first, she described what she had heard amid the confusion; later, she recalled being present for parts of the medication and injection events under investigation.

Role at LifeCare

Johnson was among the LifeCare employees navigating the separation between the hospital’s floors and the crowded evacuation areas below. As rescuers began calling for women and children to leave, she went back toward LifeCare’s seventh floor to tell two patients’ daughters that family evacuations were underway. One of them, Angela McManus, was trying to care for her mother, Wilda, while exhausted and worried about her family.

Johnson helped Angela leave. Angela was crying as they descended the dim staircase, carrying her belongings and becoming winded in the heat. Johnson guided her with a flashlight, helped carry her bags, and paused with her between floors. At the first floor, she pushed through the crowds with Angela to the front of the boat line. Because Angela was traveling alone, a place on a boat was found for her. Johnson’s actions made her a practical link between the LifeCare patients and relatives upstairs and the evacuation effort below.

Evacuation and the effort to move Everett

On the morning of September 1, 2005, Johnson and Diane Robichaux, LifeCare’s assistant administrator and incident commander, tried to work out how to get Emmett Everett out of the hospital. Everett’s size made moving him difficult. Johnson later recalled being present during a discussion with Anna Pou about his evacuation. She understood that Everett had been assigned triage category three and was seriously ill, but also that he could speak and communicate.

Johnson’s first account of the discussion was not definitive on every point. During an interview, she described Pou asking for someone to sedate Everett, but, when Virginia Rider pressed her on whether she had personally heard that request, Johnson said she could not be certain. She might have learned that particular detail from colleagues while they waited in the evacuation line. What she did remember hearing was Pou tell LifeCare staff to evacuate and say that the patients would now be in Memorial staff’s care. Johnson’s account thus distinguished what she recalled directly from what might have reached her secondhand.

Johnson also described the confusion surrounding the patients’ prospects for evacuation. When Therese Mendez found her and called her back upstairs, Johnson understood from Mendez that the patients were to receive lethal medication. Johnson connected this news with something she had heard the previous day: a physician had told Mendez that the hospital was under martial law. Johnson later explained that these reports shaped her understanding at the time, but the account did not establish that she personally heard every instruction being discussed among staff.

Initial investigation and the limits of memory

The week after Hurricane Rita, Rider interviewed Johnson alone. Though Rider preferred working with numerical records, she conducted the interview because her colleagues were away. Johnson described the disorder on the first floor as rescuers arrived and called for women and children. She recounted returning upstairs to guide Angela down to the emergency-room ramp and recalled Mendez calling for her through the crowd.

Rider also asked Johnson to account for deceased LifeCare patients. She named twenty-three patients, and Johnson could say when some had died or identify the floor where she had last seen them alive. This helped investigators reconstruct events across the first, second, and seventh floors. The interview produced substantial detail, but it also showed the limits of a witness’s memory amid a crowded, rapidly changing evacuation: Johnson’s answer about the request to sedate Everett remained qualified.

The next day, investigators spoke with Steven Harris, LifeCare’s pharmacist. His account placed Johnson with him and Robichaux after a Thursday-morning emergency meeting, when they sought to understand the plan for LifeCare’s patients. Harris said Mulderick had indicated that the patients were not expected to be evacuated and that staff should speak with Pou. He also described hearing that Pou said lethal medication would be given, and that she asked for someone to speak with or sedate Everett after staff pointed out that he was aware. A nurse declined to do so. Johnson’s testimony and Harris’s account supplied investigators with related, but not identical, perspectives on how the plan was communicated.

A later recollection

In January, a LifeCare attorney contacted Butch Schafer to report that Johnson remembered additional details and wanted to share them. Schafer spoke with her by phone, then told Rider, who arranged to hear from Johnson herself. Johnson began with Everett. She recalled accompanying Pou to the entrance of his room and could not remember whether Pou was holding syringes at that point. She did remember that Pou appeared unusually nervous and said she planned to tell Everett she would give him something for his dizziness.

Johnson’s new account extended beyond the conversation at Everett’s room. She said she had seen Pou draw fluid from vials into syringes and had seen Pou and Memorial nurses carrying syringes. She had accompanied the health professionals to patients’ bedsides and had been present for some injections. Johnson said she held patients’ hands and prayed with them, a detail that placed acts of personal comfort alongside her account of the events under investigation.

At Wilda McManus’s bedside, Johnson reported that Pou told Wilda she would give her something to make her feel better. Johnson said she looked at Wilda and spoke to her rather than watching what Pou was doing on the other side of the bed. Her account therefore connected the words used to reassure a patient with an injection she understood to be taking place, while also making clear that she had not watched every action directly.

Johnson described another bedside visit in LifeCare room 7305. She accompanied a Memorial nurse to see Ms. Hutzler, touched her hand, and prayed. Johnson then saw the nurse inject Hutzler’s roommate, Rose Savoie, who was ninety and had been treated for acute bronchitis and kidney problems. A LifeCare nurse later told investigators that both women had been alert and stable late that morning. Johnson recalled that Savoie expressed discomfort during the injection. The statement, the later report about the women’s condition, and Johnson’s account of what she witnessed became distinct pieces of the evidentiary record.

Testimony and narrative significance

Rider’s arrest-warrant affidavit drew on accounts from four initial LifeCare witnesses: Robichaux, Mendez, Johnson, and Harris. It summarized their reports that LifeCare patients were not expected to make it out, that staff were told no living patients would be left behind, and that LifeCare leaders were directed to speak with Pou. It also recounted the report of lethal medication, the concern raised about Everett’s awareness and size, and Johnson’s later account of seeing syringes and accompanying health professionals to patients. The affidavit’s narrative relied on the convergence of witness accounts, while Johnson’s own evidence developed from uncertainty in her first interview to more direct recollections in January.

Johnson’s part in the book is not limited to the investigation. During the evacuation, she escorted a distressed relative through the hospital and helped her reach a boat; in later interviews, she helped investigators trace what happened to patients across several floors. At the bedside, her account joins observation with gestures of care: guiding, holding hands, and praying. The contrast does not resolve the questions raised by the case, but it explains why her testimony mattered. Johnson could describe both the practical work of getting people out and the moments that investigators sought to understand afterward.