NEW ORLEANS - On Tuesday evening one doctor and two nurses of the Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans were arrested and charged with “being a principal to second-degree murder,” according to the Associated Press. In the days immediately following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, one dilemma, among many, was deciding how to deal with severely ill patients in an overcrowded hospital with unsanitary conditions.

After rumors had circulated that lethal injection had been discussed at the hospital among doctors and nurses, an investigation ensued to determine just what happened; had some of the weakest patients been killed under the expectation that  they could not survive? According to the Associated Press, Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti claims that Dr. Anna Pou and two nurses, Lori Budo and Cheri Landry, “filled syringes with a deadly combination of morphine and a sedative, called Versed, carefully flushing water into the patient’s IV to ensure that the drugs fully entered the bodies of the sick,” and said that “the deceased…would have survived Katrina had they not been administered the lethal doses.”

Investigations will continue to determine whether hospital patients were abandoned or murdered and to discover who may be responsible for many of these supposed untimely deaths.