Hollywood Hills nursing home administrator acquitted in deaths of 9 residents after Hurricane Irma

A judge decided Friday that a top administrator should not be held criminally accountable for the deaths of nursing home residents who perished in intense heat at the facility after it lost power to its air-conditioning system due to Hurricane Irma in 2017.

Judge John J. Murphy III scheduled a rehearing for 9 a.m. Monday at the prosecution’s request. Jurors have not been told about the ruling and were scheduled to return to court Tuesday.

Irma knocked out the power to the nursing home’s air-conditioning system, leaving the elderly residents to bear temperatures as high as 99 degrees for 62 hours. Twelve people between the ages of 57 to 99 died.

Top administrator Jorge Carballo, 65, was charged in nine of the 12 deaths. He was acquitted Friday by Murphy, who said in his order that the state’s evidence was insufficient to show that Carballo’s alleged actions were culpably negligent.

[ RELATED: 12 nursing home residents died in sweltering heat after a hurricane. At trial, their deaths called both a tragedy and a crime ]

Defense attorneys filed a routine motion asking for a judgement of acquittal, and the judge granted it in a rare move.

Carballo is “overwhelmed with joy and relieved” at the decision, said defense attorney David Frankel.

“This was very political. There never really was any evidence,” Frankel said. “It was just somebody needed to be blamed.”

After Murphy scheduled the rehearing, Frankel said, “there’s still a little bit of question in the wind.”

More than two months after the residents died, the deaths were ruled homicides from heat exposure. Carballo, Sergo Colin, a registered nurse and night shift supervisor; Tamika Tory Miller, a licensed practical nurse; and Althia Kenesha Meggie, a registered nurse, were arrested in late August 2019. The charges against Colin, Miller and Meggie were dropped last year.

Hollywood Police in their timeline of the deaths called the investigation “one of the most extensive” in the department’s history.

Jorge Carballo, one of the top administrators at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, is shown at the defense table during his Hollywood Hills nursing home manslaughter case at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale on Monday, Feb. 6, 2023. (Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun-Sentinel) (Amy Beth Bennett/AP)

Calls from the nursing home to Hollywood Fire Rescue for medical assistance came on Sept. 13, 2017, three days after Irma made landfall as a Category 4 storm in the Florida Keys. Officials declared it a mass casualty event and ordered an evacuation, according to Hollywood Police Department’s timeline of events.

When the facility’s air-conditioning system lost power, nursing home officials attempted to fix it by calling Florida Power & Light, state health officials and then-Gov. Rick Scott without success.

Spot coolers and fans were set up to alleviate the heat, heat that Broward Health Imperial Point CEO Judy Frum said during testimony was like a wave that meets you when opening a car door.

Some of the rooms were gauged with ambient temperatures of 95, 96 and 100 degrees. Body temperatures of those who died reached as high as 108 degrees, records show.

[ PAST COVERAGE: Inside the Hollywood Hills nursing home: Soaring temperatures, dying patients and a nurse asleep. Where were the people in charge? ]

Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Deputy Xavier Pastrana Santiago points on an enlarged photograph to a tree-lined sidewalk where patients from the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills were evacuated when the nursing home lost air-conditioning due to a power outage following Hurricane Irma in 2017. (Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun Sentinel)

Carballo’s defense attorneys argued in their motion that in order for their client to be convicted, prosecutors needed to prove he was aware that the loss of air conditioning was dangerous for the residents’ wellbeing and that he could foresee “at some point those efforts would fail and heat-related injury would occur.”

“In short, the State cannot simply rely on proof that at some point between September 10th and 13th temperatures in the RCHH facility rose to levels that created a dangerous environment for the residents,” the defense wrote.

The judge wrote in his order that “the undisputed evidence” is that Carballo and other nursing home employees “provided some care” to the patients and that prosecutors did not sufficiently prove that Carballo knew or should have known his actions would have led to the residents’ deaths.

Murphy wrote that Carballo had prepared ahead of the storm by stocking up on essentials and brought in fans and spot coolers to help and that staff went to hardware stores to find fans and portable AC units.

Though there were a “compounding series of miscalculations and entirely avoidable failures” that led to the residents’ deaths, Murphy wrote that Carballo attempted to take care of the patients in several ways and that his actions did not show recklessness or wanton disregard.

[ RELATED: No room for error on Hollywood Hills nursing home jury after two jurors dismissed for discussing case ]

Carballo left the facility at 11 p.m. the night before it was evacuated, and witnesses testified that he should have stayed there, given the emergency. When Carballo left, the residents were in the care of medical professionals and there were no medical emergencies before he left, Murphy wrote.

Prosecutors argued that Carballo abandoned ship in the midst of a crisis. The defense wrote in their motion that there was no immediate danger for Carballo to abandon.

“While it appears the staff could have certainly benefitted from better training, they were nevertheless capable of rendering aid to the residents, and more importantly, calling emergency services if they were no longer able to care for the residents on their own,” Murphy wrote. “Unfortunately, it appears that the medical staff failed to timely realize that the residents were beginning to suffer from heat-related illnesses and take appropriate action.”

[ PAST COVERAGE: Inside the nursing home where 12 died during Hurricane Irma: 99 degrees ]

Murphy also pointed out in his order that testimony from two of the state’s expert witnesses offered differing opinions on whether it would have been ideal to evacuate the residents.

“Given such a disagreement, it cannot be said that [Carballo] knew or should have known that his failure to evacuate the facility when the air conditioning unit first lost power was likely to lead to death or great bodily injury,” Murphy wrote.

The Agency for Health Care Administration issued a final order in January 2019 revoking the nursing home’s license.

Information from Sun Sentinel archives was used in this report.