Mental Exam Ordered for Nurse Charged in 2 Deaths

A registered nurse charged with hastening the deaths of two dying patients in her care at Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills was ordered Tuesday by a San Fernando Superior Court judge to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

The evaluation will be used to help guide the court’s sentencing if Linda Sue Rangel, 35, of Canyon Country pleads guilty to the two counts of attempted murder she now faces, Judge John H. Major said.

Rangel was arrested Nov. 21 in connection with the deaths of Lorraine Sammons, 50, of Lake View Terrace, and Pedro Contreras, 40, of Sun Valley. Both had shot themselves in unrelated suicide attempts, authorities said. Rangel allegedly speeded their deaths by lowering the oxygen level on the two patients’ mechanical ventilators without consulting either the patients’ families or their physicians.

Rangel’s attorney, Larry Baker, refused to comment on the case or on the possibility that his client plans to plead guilty at her next scheduled court appearance June 30.

The nurse faces life imprisonment if she is convicted of both charges. But Major said the results of the psychiatric evaluation will play a large part in his determining an appropriate sentence for her.

Not Charged With Murder

Rangel, who had been a critical-care nurse at Holy Cross Medical Center since 1980, was not charged with murder because it was not clear whether the patients’ deaths were caused by the gunshot wounds or by the nurse’s adjustment of oxygen levels on the life-support systems, authorities said.

Sammons died Feb. 5, 1987, within an hour of her ventilator’s adjustment, and Contreras died June 16, 1987, four hours after his oxygen level was altered.

Criminal charges were not brought against Rangel until November, after an anonymous letter in January, 1988, prompted a Los Angeles Police Department investigation into the two deaths.

Rangel resigned from the hospital voluntarily in June, 1987, after hospital officials suspended her and began investigating charges from an anonymous source that Rangel had tampered with patients’ life-support systems.