In 2017, Jorge Carballo was charged with manslaughter of nine patients after Hurricane Irma. Now he is standing trial in what his attorney calls a “scapegoat” case, ABC News reports. If convicted, Carballo could face 15 years in prison.
Victims ranged from ages 57 to 99 and had body temperatures of up to 108 degrees Fahrenheit.
Carballo allegedly failed to give adequate direction to Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills staff members after the power to the facility’s air conditioning system went out due to extreme weather, ABC News reports. It is reported that Carballo failed to evacuate patients to Memorial Regional Hospital, which had working air conditioning. Instead, he allegedly went home due to the heat. The outage caused the death of 12 patients.
However, defense attorney James Cobb is arguing that Carballo did everything he could to protect his patients, such as purchasing fans and installing portable AC units. ABC News reports, that Cobb notified the jury that Carballo alerted Florida Power & Light that the air conditioning power was down several times throughout the course of 48 hours, but the company didn’t send a crew over until news reports of patients dying. The outage allegedly took 10 minutes to fix.
The trial is expected to last three weeks.
Mackenna Moralez is the associate editor for the facilities market.
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