Morphine Overdose

The Herald Sun reported that Alando Williams died at at Windsor Healthcare Center of Oaklanda nursing home after being given too much medication to prevent him from wandering.  Williams died at the age of 64 . The heavy regimen of medication led to his wrongful death. The unsafe staffing made a chemical restraint necessary according to the employees. His daughter, Kyomi Williams, said:

“My father’s last days were spent in horrific conditions with people who were supposed to provide care for him and instead abused and neglected him.”

When arriving at the nursing home on December 9th, 2022, Mr. Williams had a mild cognitive impairment. He arrived with an “adequate” treatment plan from his doctors nearly a month before his death on January 7th, 2023. The treatment plan was not followed. Mr. Williams needed supervision and regular help with daily activities to “protect him from wandering off, falls, and other safety hazards.”

Kyomi Williams said that when she visited her father, the facility was “dirty and hazardous.” Kyomi Williams said she saw staff members sleeping, medications being left out, and items that were provided to her father would go missing. During the first few days of Mr. William’s stay, Kyomi was notified of his wandering and found him outside on a crosswalk afterward. Before this, the nursing home had increased Mr. Williams’s Ativan dose.

The nursing home staff was aware of Mr. Williams and his likeness to wander off, which led them to obtain a doctor’s order to give him medications “as needed.” These medications included Ativan, a sedative and anxiety medication, and morphine, a pain-relieving opioid. Kyomi Williams was “never told that the facility was administering to my dad unauthorized and lethal doses of sedatives like Ativan.”

Medical experts are prepared to testify of how Ativan and morphine contributed to Mr. Williams’ death.

The complaint says, “Not only did the facility subject Mr. Williams to a cruel punishment of chemical restraints, but they failed to monitor his condition and account for his basic needs,” staff at the nursing home failed to treat Mr. William when he was coughing and had shortness of breath and let him go several nights without a blanket.

By dosing Mr. Williams with “powerful drugs” the nursing home caused him to suffer from “numerous other complications, including disorientation and confusion from being drugged up, loss of balance, decline in function, increased dependency for care needs which placed him at further risk of complications of neglect by the facility and susceptibility to falls.”

Just a few short days before Mr. Williams’s death, the facility doubled his morphine dose, leading to his falling on January 3rd, 2022. The complaint argues, “They merely saw Mr. Williams as a prisoner that required chemical restraints.”