Friday, August 13, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Hospital accused of stonewalling

Investigators in 11-year-old girl's death seek medical records, interviews in Colorado facility

Administrators at a Colorado hospital interfered with a Las Vegas murder investigation by not providing medical records and instructing witnesses to clam up, Las Vegas officials said.

Police Detective Mark McNett said he and a deputy district attorney went to Alamosa, Colo., to get records and interview hospital employees but were stonewalled.

Leonard Snow, risk-management administrator at San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center, told hospital workers to not talk to investigators from Las Vegas, McNett said. He said a school nurse told him Snow instructed her to not speak with investigators.

McNett said he probably would have arrested Snow had he issued such instructions to a witness in Clark County.

"He's hindering and delaying my investigation. If he is going to someone outside his place of employment and telling her to not talk to us, it would have been obstruction of a police officer."

Snow referred calls to the hospital's attorney, Deanne Potestio, who said a Colorado law prevented medical personnel last month from talking to Las Vegas investigators about the victim without authorization from her father.

"Whether its a civil suit or a criminal action, these laws apply," she said.

Investigators went to Colorado to investigate allegations of neglect against murder suspect Cheryl Botzet. She is awaiting trial, charged in the death of her daughter, Ariel Botzet, an 11-year-old diabetic who died from an insulin reaction in February.

Botzet and her two children moved to Alamosa from Las Vegas in late 2002 before returning in 2003.

While they lived there, a doctor, a nurse, a school nurse and the manager of an apartment complex were aware that Ariel wasn't receiving proper care for her diabetes, prosecutors said.

Deputy District Attorney Vicki Monroe, who is prosecuting the case against Botzet, said officials at the Alamosa medical center said Potestio is mistaken. As with federal patient-privacy laws, the Colorado law doesn't apply to criminal investigations.

"A team went to Alamosa and they got stonewalled," Monroe said.

She believes hospital officials didn't cooperate because they were concerned about the hospital's liability if it released medical records in violation of law. As medical professionals, employees at the hospital are required by law to report to authorities any evidence they see of child abuse or neglect, Monroe said.

She questioned what liability the hospital would face considering the patient is dead, that the mother is accused of her murder and the child's father signed releases allowing her records to be shared with investigators.

Prosecutors plan to file subpoenas in Alamosa courts to compel hospital employees to provide medical records and testify about their experiences caring for Ariel Botzet.