Louisiana nursing home owner sentenced for Hurricane Ida warehouse cruelty, inhumane conditions

Louisiana nursing home owner Bob Dean pleaded no contest to 15 criminal counts of cruelty to the infirm, obstruction of justice and Medicaid fraud for sending more than 800 patients to a former pesticide warehouse in 2021 during Hurricane Ida where they faced "inhumane" conditions, but avoided jail time in his sentence.

Instead of jail, state Judge Brian Abels sentenced Dean to three years probation and ordered Dean to pay more than $1 million in civil penalties to the state's Department of Justice and nearly $354,000 in restitution to the Louisiana Department of Health to reimburse Medicaid payments he received while residents were housed in squalor.

At least seven of the nursing home residents housed at the warehouse in Independence died.

The cruelty penalties alone could have carried 80 years in prison. The plea was entered at the Tangipahoa Parish Courthouse Monday.

Attorney General Liz Murrill said she disagreed with the decision not to sentence Dean to prison.

“Our prosecutors urged that Mr. Dean be held accountable for his conduct, which led to the deaths of numerous elderly individuals," Murrill said. "We asked specifically that he be sentenced to a minimum of five years in prison, and not be given only probation. I respect our judicial system and that the judge has the ultimate discretion over the appropriate sentence, but I remain of the opinion that Dean should be serving prison time.”

Her spokesman Lester Duhe' emphasized to USA Today Network that the sentence was not a negotiated plea deal that the attorney general signed off on.

The seven facilities that evacuated patients to the Independence warehouse were located in Orleans, Lafourche, Terrebonne and Jefferson parishes.

Louisiana's Department of Health did give prior approval to Dean's evacuation plan to the warehouse, but its top attorney as the time said Dean's staff failed to deliver "the basic necessities and safety requirements" laid out in the plan and described the conditions as inhumane.

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Greg Hilburn covers state politics for the USA TODAY Network of Louisiana. Follow him on Twitter @Greg Hilburn1

This article originally appeared on Shreveport Times: Louisiana nursing home owner sentenced for Hurricane Ida warehouse cruelty, inhumane conditions