Dallas doc gets 190 years for injecting IV bags with heart-stopping drugs

A Dallas anesthesiologist has been sentenced to 190 years in prison for injecting “heart-stopping drugs” into IV bags at the surgical center where he worked, leading to the death of a co-worker and “numerous cardiac emergencies,” federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

Raynaldo Rivera Ortiz Jr. injected IV bags of saline with a nerve-blocking agent and other dangerous drugs at Surgicare North Dallas, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. He then waited for the bags to be used in surgeries performed by his colleagues — all while “knowing their patients would experience dangerous complications.”

The 60-year-old anesthesiologist was arrested in September 2022 and indicted by a grand jury a month later.

Earlier this year, after an eight-day trial and seven hours of deliberation, a jury convicted Ortiz of four counts of tampering with consumer products resulting in serious bodily injury, one count of tampering with a consumer product and five counts of intentional adulteration of a drug.

An investigation into the disgraced physician began just over two years ago, after several patients at the Dallas surgery center suffered cardiac emergencies during routine medical procedures performed by different doctors between May and August 2022.

The “unexplained emergencies” began two days after Ortiz was notified of a disciplinary inquiry stemming from an incident during which he allegedly “deviated from the standard of care,” according to the criminal complaint.

During that time, an anesthesiologist who also worked at the facility died while treating herself for dehydration using an IV bag, according to prosecutors.

Ortiz, who had a history of disciplinary actions against him, also complained to other doctors that the center was trying to “crucify” him, prosecutors said.

Surveillance video presented in court showed Ortiz “repeatedly retrieving IV bags from the warming bin” before replacing them a short time later. It also showed Ortiz “mixing vials of medication and watching as victims were wheeled out by emergency responders.”

Ortiz was sentenced Wednesday by Chief U.S. District Judge David Godbey, who found he’d caused the death of his colleague and called his other acts “tantamount to attempted murder.”

“This disgraced doctor acted no better than an armed assailant spraying bullets indiscriminately into a crowd,” U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton said Wednesday in a statement. “Dr. Ortiz tampered with random IV bags, apparently unconcerned with who he hurt. But he wielded an invisible weapon, a cocktail of heart-stopping drugs, concealed inside an IV bag designed to help patients heal.”