Federal agents arrested a Texas doctor accused of tampering with IV bags that led to a colleague’s death and sparked a series of terrifying operating room emergencies.
Raynaldo Rivera Ortiz, Jr. 59, was taken into custody Wednesday in Plano, Texas, by the Dallas Police Department, spokeswoman Kristin Lowman told Fox News Digital.
Lowman said the department is assisting the U.S. Attorney’s Office with the probe, but declined to provide further details.
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This isn’t the Corvette-loving doctor’s first brush with the criminal justice system. He was convicted of shooting a neighbor’s dog with a pellet gun in 2015 and accused of assaulting at least two women.
The Texas Medical Board yanked Ortiz’s license to practice on Sept. 9, hours after federal authorities shared information with the agency about their ongoing criminal investigation, records show.
The anesthesiologist was allegedly captured on surveillance footage slipping IV bags into a warmer in the hall outside the operating rooms at Baylor Scott & White Surgicare at North Dallas, according to a suspension order issued by the board.
“When he deposited an IV bag in the warmer, shortly thereafter a patient would suffer a serious complication,” the report states.
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Ortiz’s colleague, beloved anesthesiologist Melanie Kaspar, took a contaminated IV bag home on June 21 to rehydrate due to an illness.
“She inserted the IV into her vein and almost immediately had a serious cardiac event and died,” the order says.
Kaspar was fatally poisoned with bupivacaine — a numbing agent used to alleviate pain during surgery, according to an autopsy.
The drug is meant to be injected into the spinal cord and is known to cause “severe cardio- and neurotoxicity” and death when injected into the veins, according to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices in Canada.
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Tests were conducted on the remaining IV bags in the warmer. They had “visible tiny holes in the plastic wrap” and contained bupivacaine.
Fluids left in a used IV bag that had been given to a healthy patient during a routine surgery who suffered a serious cardiac event contained similar drugs, according to the medical board.
“Respondent’s continued practice of medicine poses a continuing threat to public welfare,” the emergency suspension order states.
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