Dr. Jonathan Heard

A full-time surgeon at King/Drew, Dr. Jonathan Heard was faulted in the 1992 death of Sheriff’s Deputy Nelson Yamamoto.

The deputy had a better than even chance of surviving his gunshot wounds, but Heard administered a lethal combination of heart medications, said county prosecutors in a report issued three years later. The district attorney never filed charges, however, saying a jury would be unlikely to convict.

Since then, Heard has been named in three other malpractice suits resulting in payouts to people he treated while moonlighting at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. They include a $285,000 jury award in 1999 to a patient who suffered a massive infection after Heard missed a perforation in his esophagus during surgery, court records say.

Another case, which was settled for an undisclosed sum, also prompted a formal accusation from the Medical Board of California in 2002. The board accused Heard of misdiagnosing a 27-year-old man with appendicitis when he actually had Crohn’s disease, an intestinal disorder.

According to the board’s allegations, Heard told Brian Kelly’s family that he had removed Kelly’s appendix, and he billed the man’s insurance company for the procedure. Heard hadn’t removed the organ, however. He had stitched through Kelly’s intestinal tract, the board said, and after an infection developed, another doctor operated and found “a normal, intact appendix.”

Heard has asked for a hearing to contest the board’s allegations, but declined to comment on them in an interview. In the sheriff’s deputy case, he said, the board did not pursue discipline against him after he passed an oral examination.

In general, Heard acknowledged making some mistakes but said all surgeons do, especially in difficult cases.

“I want you to find me a surgeon that works in a high-risk field and find one that has not had any type of adverse action against him,” he said.