Case dismissed involving COVID-19 deaths at LA nursing home

Criminal charges have been dismissed the case against Irvine-based Silverado Senior Living Management Inc. and three of its managers in connection with the COVID-related deaths of a nurse and 13 people who lived at a residential care facility in Los Angeles.

Silverado Senior Living Management Inc. was charged in February along with Loren Bernard Shook, the company’s chief executive officer, Jason Michael Russo, a company administrator at the time, and Kimberly Cheryl Butrum, a vice president, with 13 felony counts of elder endangerment and five felony counts of violation causing death. The case was dismissed Wednesday by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge.

“We are obviously very disappointed at the court’s ruling. Our belief in the strength of the case has not changed,” the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement released Friday. “In the coming days our team will convene to determine next steps.”

In its own statement, Silverado Memory Care noted that the charges were “summarily dismissed without ever getting to trial.”

“These charges were brought forth by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office earlier this year in an egregious attack on not just our organization, but our courageous caregivers,” according to the company’s statement. “The judge dismissed all charges against Silverado, leaving Silverado to question why the charges were filed to begin with, which consumed valuable resources in an already overloaded legal system.”

The investigation into Silverado Beverly Place was launched after the facility reported the April 20, 2020, death of a 32-year-old employee, Brittany Ringo, District Attorney George Gascón said in March when he announced the charges.

“As required by the protocols at the time, the facility was closed to outside visitors by Silverado in March of 2020. Yet, despite these protocols, an exception was made to admit a patient from New York,” the county’s top prosecutor said at a March 14 news conference detailing the charges. “Ms. Ringo died from COVID-19 after being exposed while working as a licensed vocational nurse for Silverado when she was directed on March 19, 2020, to admit this new resident who came directly to the facility from the airport. This individual had just arrived from a clinical setting in New York — a COVID-19 hot-spot at the time.”

The district attorney said the new resident — who began displaying COVID-19 symptoms the morning after arriving and tested positive that evening — had not immediately been tested for COVID-19 and had not been required to quarantine in isolation prior to admission as required by health protocols in place at the time.

“Those protocols were intended to slow the spread of this dangerous virus, especially while working with vulnerable populations. We have evidence to support that the protocols were not followed due to financial considerations of accepting this patient from New York,” Gascón alleged.

Ringo tested positive for COVID-19 six days after the new resident’s arrival and died less than a month later, with 13 of the facility’s residents dying and more than 100 other residents and staff members being diagnosed with COVID-19 as a result of the outbreak, according to the district attorney.

The other people who died were identified as Elizabeth Cohen, Joseph Manduke, Catherine Apothaker, Jake Khorsandi, Albert Sarnoff, Dolores Sarnoff, Myrna Frank, Frank Piumetti, Jay Tedeman, Luba Paz, Kaye Kiddoo, Richard Herman and Michael Horn.

“We do not have to prove that COVID was brought in by this particular patient,” said Marc Beaart, the DA’s director of fraud and corruption prosecutions. “We simply have to show there was a positive test and that the protocols were not followed.”

Jeff Frum, senior vice president of sales & marketing for Silverado, said in a statement last month that the company “denies all charges filed against us — they are baseless and egregiously contradict the facts. We look forward to presenting our case during the legal process.

“We will always grieve the loss of the residents to the pandemic and the frontline hero who cared for them,” Frum said. “We have taken the pandemic extremely seriously since the start. We recognized COVID-19’s unprecedented threat to society, particularly for people living with dementia and their caregivers. Silverado was a leader in developing protocols for people living with dementia and many of these same protocols became standards for the entire memory care industry.”