A Pennsylvania nurse who prosecutors say administered excessive doses of insulin to nursing home patients, 17 of whom died, pleaded guilty Thursday.
The nurse, Heather Pressdee, was charged last May with killing two patients and injuring a third at Quality Life Services, a skilled nursing facility in Chicora. Months later, she was hit with new charges after prosecutors said she confessed to trying to kill 19 others at different facilities where she worked.
In total, Pressdee allegedly mistreated 22 patients — some diabetic and others not — with dangerously high levels of insulin at different facilities from 2020 to 2023, the state attorney general’s office said.
Her charges include first-degree murder, attempted murder and neglect of a care-dependent person.
She pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and 19 counts of criminal attempt to commit murder, the attorney general’s office said in a news release.
Several family members of victims have filed wrongful death lawsuits.
The family of Nicholas Cymbol said in a civil suit filed in March that Pressdee “routinely insulted, berated, bullied and abused” him at Sunnyview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Butler.
They described Cymbol as a “brittle diabetic” who had an anoxic brain injury, blindness and neuropathy. The suit alleged that Pressdee would prevent other nurses from feeding or giving him water and would use derogatory terms in reference to his brain injury.
