Dani Mari Schofield in court on June 14, 2024. (KOMO screenshot) and Asante Rogue Regional Hospital (Google Maps)
A 36-year-old former nurse in Oregon is facing a slew of felonies for allegedly stealing liquid fentanyl prescribed to patients and replacing the drug with non-sterile tap water. Dani Mari Schofield was taken into custody on Thursday and charged with 44 counts of second-degree assault over the “drug diversion” scheme, authorities announced.
According to a news release from the Medford, Oregon Police Department, the arrest took place at about 12:30 p.m. in the 5000 block of Rogue River Drive, about 260 miles south of Portland.
The seven-month investigation into Schofield began in early December 2023, when officials with Asante Rogue Regional Hospital contacted police and reported being concerned with the “rising number of central line infection cases” they were seeing among patients in their care. The hospital conducted an internal investigation with the help of outside medical experts and determined that all of the infection cases were isolated to patients in the Intensive Care Unit, and they all happened within a specific date range. That report was provided to the police.
Due to the magnitude of the case, the department said it dedicated several full-time detectives. Investigators said they spent months “pouring through volumes of hospital records” and interviewed more than 100 individuals, including doctors, nurses, patients, and many of the victims.
“Based on records and interviews, investigators were able to determine that ICU nurse Schofield had access to each of these victims,” police said in the release. “There was concern that Schofield had been diverting patients’ liquid fentanyl for her personal use and then replacing it with tap water, causing serious infections. Schofield left Asante in July 2023.”
Following the investigation, detectives presented their findings to the Jackson County District Attorney’s Office for review. Prosecutors on June 12 convened a grand jury that issued a true bill indicting Schofield on the aforementioned assault charges.
Police explained the reasoning behind charging Schofield with second-degree assault.
“The multiple Assault in the 2nd Degree charges result from the evidence that indicates that Schofield’s actions resulted in injury to impacted patients,” the release states. “A person commits Assault in the 2nd Degree if the person intentionally or knowingly causes serious physical injury to another. The 44 charges reflect the total amount of patients that this investigation revealed to have been affected by Schofield’s criminal actions.”
Shayla Steyart, an attorney representing 15 of the victims, told Seattle, Washington, ABC affiliate KOMO that her clients will be suing the hospital, alleging that the entity was negligent in allowing the alleged drug diversion scheme to take place for so long.
“The fact that it was tap water made it so egregious,” Steyart told the station. “The district attorney says they’re looking at a year span of these cases, and if they’ve identified 44 individuals that this happened to, I am hard-pressed to understand how it wasn’t found out sooner.”
At least one of Schofield’s alleged patients died from the alleged tap water swap, according to a lawsuit filed by the estate of Horace Wilson. Wilson was admitted into the Asante ICU after falling from a ladder in January 2022 and suffering a lacerated spleen and broken ribs, NBC News reported. The suit reportedly claims that Schofield switched Wilson’s pain medication with tap water, resulting in a bacterial blood infection that ultimately proved fatal.
Schofield is being held in the Jackson County Jail on $5 million bond.
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