{"id":572993,"date":"2026-04-09T02:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T02:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/572993\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T02:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T02:26:10","slug":"3-former-employees-of-dc-psychiatric-hospital-indicted-in-death-of-patient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/572993\/","title":{"rendered":"3 former employees of DC psychiatric hospital indicted in death of patient"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro announced Wednesday indictments against three employees of the Psychiatric Institute of Washington for their roles in the death of a patient.<\/p>\n<p>Three employees of the Psychiatric Institute of Washington have been indicted on charges related to the death of a patient, U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro said Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Pirro said the three employees \u2014 Nelson Kuma, 37, Richard Hounnou, 45, and Norma Munoz-Bent, 68, all residents of Maryland \u2014 are charged with one count of criminally negligent homicide and face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.<\/p>\n<p>Kuma and Hounnou work as psychiatric counselors and Munoz-Bent is a registered nurse.<\/p>\n<p>All three employees pleaded not guilty and were released Tuesday pending trial, according to a news <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-dc\/pr\/three-former-employees-psychiatric-institute-washington-indicted-criminal-negligence\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">release from Pirro\u2019s office<\/a>. Pirro said her office will be filing a notice of appeal regarding their release.<\/p>\n<p>In April 2020, the patient, referred to as \u201cGW,\u201d was a 58-year-old man who had been admitted to the Tenleytown facility for two days. He had previously had an \u201cemergency event,\u201d Pirro said, and had to be resuscitated.<\/p>\n<p>Because of his health status, GW was meant to receive one-to-one care, where a health care professional was supposed to check on him every 15 minutes and enter information into a record.<\/p>\n<p>According to video taken inside the hospital, the man can be seen lying nude on a mattress on the floor and having labored breathing.<\/p>\n<p>Pirro said a psych tech enters the room, takes note of the man\u2019s labored breathing but does nothing to help \u201cfor four minutes. He walks around, does nothing. A second tech enters the room, they fist bump each other, and for seven minutes, they have a very animated conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then, a nurse enters the room, \u201cstares at him\u201d but does nothing to help. She returns with a blood pressure cuff but puts it on his forearm, not above his elbow.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHere\u2019s the bottom line, this trio did nothing to help this patient,\u201d Pirro said. \u201cThey finally turned the man over at 12:56, and they gave him a chest compression, 21 minutes later.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By the time they attempted the life-saving measures, he\u2019d died.<\/p>\n<p>Pirro said the health care employees \u201cviolated the most basic standard of medical care.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI also want to be clear this was not a close call. This was not a difficult medical judgment. This was basic, entry-level incompetence. This was completely abandoning the health of a human being. They had a legal and an ethical duty to act, and they chose not to,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The three employees will return to court May 29.<\/p>\n<p class=\"single-page__signature bottom\">Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up <a href=\"https:\/\/wtop.com\/newsletter-signup\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"single-page__signature bottom\">\u00a9 2026 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro announced Wednesday indictments against three employees of the Psychiatric Institute of Washington&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[252241,51228,97,252,253,74792,73532,252242,252243],"class_list":{"0":"post-572993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-criminal-neglect","9":"tag-dc-crime","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-health-care","12":"tag-healthcare","13":"tag-indictment","14":"tag-jeanine-pirro","15":"tag-psychiatric-institute-of-washington","16":"tag-tenleytown"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}