Paramedic trying to calm patient accidentally gives fatal injection, Iowa officials say

A former paramedic is accused of injecting a patient with an incorrect and dangerous drug, causing his death in Iowa, news outlets report.

Deanna Fay LaMere is charged with involuntary manslaughter, according to court records filed Jan. 16 in Woodbury County.

Attorney information for LaMere was not immediately available. Sioux City Fire Rescue did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The charge comes more than a year after the fatal incident, news outlets report.

LaMere responded to a call for help on the east side of Sioux City on Aug. 18, 2023, county prosecutors say, KTIV reports. James Foster Jr., 26, was in a state of distress and first responders were trying to calm him down in order to load him into an ambulance, so LaMere decided to give him an injection, according to prosecutors.

With the help of a firefighter holding Foster down, LaMere injected him with what she thought was ketamine, court documents said, but upon returning to the ambulance to prepare a second dose, LaMere realized she had given Foster a very different drug — Rocuronium, the Sioux City Journal reported.

Rocuronium is often used with anesthesia while preparing patients for surgery, according to the Mayo Clinic. The “fast-acting” drug causes paralysis such that a patient is rendered totally unable to move, the NIH says.

If given by IV, a patient would need to be intubated within about a minute in order to keep breathing, prosecutors said, KTIV reported. However, Foster would have had more time since the drug was injected.

But that extra time didn’t save him. Soon, Foster said he was unable to breath and lost consciousness, records said, the Sioux City Journal reported. He died two days later at a hospital and the cause of death was determined to be cardiac arrest brought on by Rocuronium, officials said.

Prosecutors say LaMere not only failed to ensure she was administering the right drugs, but then “did not take the appropriate steps to notify anyone or treat the patient any different,” Sioux City Journal reported. “It wasn’t until they got to the emergency room at Mercy One Medical Center that the defendant told the ER physician about the medication error.”

Sioux City is a roughly 200-mile drive northwest from Des Moines.

This story was originally published January 19, 2025 at 12:18 PM with the headline "Paramedic trying to calm patient accidentally gives fatal injection, Iowa officials say."