Nurse’s Capital Murder Trial to Continue Today

LUFKIN — Testimony continues today in Lufkin in the trial of Kimberly Saenz. The former nurse is accused of killing at least five DaVita Dialysis patients in April 2008 by injecting them with bleach from a cleaning pail.

On Friday, day five of the capital murder trial, one of Saenz’s former co-workers testified there was a “certain group” of dialysis patients Saenz didn’t like treating. According to the Lufkin Daily News, when asked by prosecutor Clyde Herrington to specify what patients Saenz, now 38, “didn’t like,” Candace Lackey named seven of the 10 people Saenz is alleged to have injected with bleach.

When asked by Saenz’s defense attorney Ryan Deaton to clarify her statement, Lackey said that working with that certain group of patients would cause Saenz some distress. Throughout the course of the trial, Deaton has theorized that DaVita’s improperly purified water caused the patient deaths. While several DaVita employees testified that dialysis machines were cleaned with bleach once a week after all patients were gone, Lackey testified she saw another practice.

Before jurors left for the day, they listened to a recording of Saenz’s testimony before an Angelina County grand jury. Saenz said as she and her co-workers watched more and more patients die and become ill they became more concerned. It was out of concern for her patients, Saenz said, that she and her husband looked up bleach poisoning online April 2, one day after the initial two deaths.

If convicted of capital murder, Saenz faces life in prison or death by lethal injection. Day six of her trial is scheduled to begin this morning.