Meningitis as Murder Weapon - The Statistical Anomaly of Bacterial Cases Near Me

By PETE BENNETT - Contra Costa Watch EMAIL
Phone: 510-460-5641
Posted: 01/14/2014
Discovery Date: 
Incident Date Range: From ----- to ------ 

Walnut Creek CA:  They say at the end of they day statistics prove out the facts.  I'm taking a new approach by developing PowerPoint  presentations, videos, and continuing to write with new emphasis on how the political machine has sat back practically waiting for me to be killed.  It's gotten better but I've got bills, debts and my sons live in a shit-shack while my elected politicians cozy up with the Visa Machine.  

You'd be pissed if you have a cop run you off the road and six months later your sons half brother was murdered and you suspect that the Father of the son given up for adoption attempted to kill you via a hit and run but that his relative is the Chief of Police.  

Meningitis as a Murder Weapon

Getting back the Meningitis cases.  The first fatal near me was that of mom like me going through a divorce in Alamo CA.  I remember how the same Alamo 1st members tried to postulating her take that Magic Mormon Baptorama dip at the Great Big Temple in Oakland.  I think these guys carry little Baptorama scorecards on their I-phones (upgraded from paper in 2010).  

When this mom shared her story I'd already been concerned about the Doc's Pharmacy Case in Walnut Creek (2001) connected to many deaths in Contra Costa County with my long-time friend Bob Horowitz who was quoted that he felt "railroaded" by the Pharmacy Board and after you read to the other cases you'll probably wonder if perhaps this was a murder scene all along and by no means does Mr. Horowitz should anyone consider him a suspect.  If anyone is a suspect it's Jamie Sheets but he's dead after committing suicide in Pleasant Hill but few know this he once worked as Pharmacist at 500 South Broadway Walnut Creek which is 500 feet from where my friend Tim Hogan plunged to his death down the same creek/channel where my other friends son and his friend drowned from Los Lomas High School.  

Back the other fatal and near fatal bacterial infections - if anyone even considers this normal I have several Walnut Creek Police officers that will gladly mark you with 5150 Papers.  

Fatal 

Councilman Mike Shimansky

Councilman Gary Bell 

Tax Collector Bill Pollacek 

Alamo Girl

Doc's Pharmacy - four victims 

Survivors 

Phil - Former Coworker 

Supervisor Glover 

Pete Bennett 

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Dead Witnesses: Druggist used pain patches to end his life / Walnut Creek pharmacist punished for tainted doses

This person is technically a witness to a potential criminal case.   

Druggist used pain patches to end his life / Walnut Creek pharmacist punished for tainted doses

Erin Hallissy, Jim Herron Zamora, Chronicle Staff Writers

Published 4:00 am, Friday, March 29, 2002

Despondent that he was facing punishment for a fatal meningitis (please read Meningitis as Murder Weapon) outbreak last year that was linked to his pharmacy, a young pharmacist committed suicide by overdosing himself with powerful painkiller patches, coroner's reports say.

Jamey Phillip Sheets, 32, who owned just under half of Doc's Pharmacy until it was sold last year, was discovered dead on Tuesday night by his wife, Michelle, when she returned to their Pleasant Hill home from a trip to Southern California that Sheets had refused to go on.
"Everyone is shocked by this," Sheets' attorney, John Francis Martin, said yesterday. "I really can't comprehend how desperate he must have been."
Michelle Sheets told authorities that her husband had been depressed over having his license suspended for 90 days beginning on Sunday, and over financial problems related to losing his co-ownership of Doc's, said Pleasant Hill Police Lt. Gary Ezell
According to state records, Sheets believed he was being unfairly blamed for the contaminated medication that killed three people.
Sheets had not made any suicide threats, and his wife was not worried that he'd harm himself while she traveled with their two young children to visit her mother in Oceanside, Ezell said.
"She felt that she'd allow him some space in the hopes that he'd be improved" when she returned, he said.
Instead, she found him dead in bed, with six high-dosage fentanyl patches on his neck and chest and an open can of beer nearby.
No suicide note was found. A woman at the Sheets' home yesterday said Michelle Sheets would not speak to reporters.
Fentanyl is a morphine derivative mainly used by patients with terminal cancer. The 100-milligram patch is the strongest made, and is designed to release the drug over 72 hours, said Ryan de Guzman, a pharmacist in Stockton who teaches at the University of the Pacific pharmacy school.
"I would imagine that it would be a peaceful way to knock yourself out, with no pain at all," de Guzman. "This is probably why he chose the route he did."
Although Sheets owned 49 percent of Doc's Pharmacy in Walnut Creek, most of the legal and administrative blame for the meningitis outbreak has been placed on his longtime co-owner, Robert Horwitz, a major proponent of compounding, or specially mixing medications.
Last May and June, three people died and 13 others were hospitalized after receiving spinal shots of a steroid called betamethasone mixed by Doc's Pharmacy technicians. The medicine, used to treat back pain, was not properly sterilized and was contaminated by a common bacterium.
Horwitz will lose his license for one year beginning Sunday. Sheets would have gotten his license back, with some restrictions, and then been on probation for five years. He also was ordered to pay $37,159 in investigation and prosecution costs.
Sheets had worked in the pharmacy of a Walnut Creek Safeway since August. Safeway had agreed to let him continue working in a non-pharmacy role during his suspension, Ezell said.
Sheets "wasn't happy with the result, but I didn't think he was despondent over it," his attorney said. "He had everything to live for and nothing to die for. He had a beautiful wife and two beautiful kids. He was a great young man. This was not something that would keep him back for long."
Sheets was an up-and-coming pharmacist when Horwitz, 62, recruited him with the promise that the younger man would eventually take over the business.
But Sheets, who had specialized in clinical work, had no experience in compounding medications or in retail pharmacy.
"I foolishly was led to believe that Doc's Pharmacy, being such a well- respected pharmacy and Dr. Horwitz being so well-revered by his colleagues, was following all practices to the letter of the law," he wrote the Board of Pharmacy after the meningitis tragedy.
Sheets had no direct involvement in compounding the tainted medicine, the reports say. He insisted to state officials that he could not be blamed because he had not been at the pharmacy when the drugs were compounded.
State officials found that Horwitz was ultimately responsible because he was the pharmacist in charge and established most of the pharmacy's practices.
"Mostly out of deference to and respect for Horwitz, he never thought to challenge established compounding procedures or to push hard for improved quality controls," officials found

.

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By PETE BENNETT - Contra Costa Watch EMAIL
Phone: 510-460-5641
Posted: 12/18/2013

Reposted to Protect My Sons

Another deceased Witness? 

Druggist used pain patches to end his life / Walnut Creek pharmacist punished for tainted doses

Erin Hallissy, Jim Herron Zamora, Chronicle Staff Writers

Published 4:00 am, Friday, March 29, 2002

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Despondent that he was facing punishment for a fatal meningitis outbreak last year that was linked to his pharmacy, a young pharmacist committed suicide by overdosing himself with powerful painkiller patches, coroner's reports say.

Jamey Phillip Sheets, 32, who owned just under half of Doc's Pharmacy until it was sold last year, was discovered dead on Tuesday night by his wife, Michelle, when she returned to their Pleasant Hill home from a trip to Southern California that Sheets had refused to go on.

"Everyone is shocked by this," Sheets' attorney, John Francis Martin, said yesterday. "I really can't comprehend how desperate he must have been."

Michelle Sheets told authorities that her husband had been depressed over having his license suspended for 90 days beginning on Sunday, and over financial problems related to losing his co-ownership of Doc's, said Pleasant Hill Police Lt. Gary Ezell.

According to state records, Sheets believed he was being unfairly blamed for the contaminated medication that killed three people.

Sheets had not made any suicide threats, and his wife was not worried that he'd harm himself while she traveled with their two young children to visit her mother in Oceanside, Ezell said.

"She felt that she'd allow him some space in the hopes that he'd be improved" when she returned, he said.

Instead, she found him dead in bed, with six high-dosage fentanyl patches on his neck and chest and an open can of beer nearby.

No suicide note was found. A woman at the Sheets' home yesterday said Michelle Sheets would not speak to reporters.

Fentanyl is a morphine derivative mainly used by patients with terminal cancer. The 100-milligram patch is the strongest made, and is designed to release the drug over 72 hours, said Ryan de Guzman, a pharmacist in Stockton who teaches at the University of the Pacific pharmacy school.

"I would imagine that it would be a peaceful way to knock yourself out, with no pain at all," de Guzman. "This is probably why he chose the route he did."

Although Sheets owned 49 percent of Doc's Pharmacy in Walnut Creek, most of the legal and administrative blame for the meningitis outbreak has been placed on his longtime co-owner, Robert Horwitz, a major proponent of compounding, or specially mixing medications.

Last May and June, three people died and 13 others were hospitalized after receiving spinal shots of a steroid called betamethasone mixed by Doc's Pharmacy technicians. The medicine, used to treat back pain, was not properly sterilized and was contaminated by a common bacterium.

Horwitz will lose his license for one year beginning Sunday. Sheets would have gotten his license back, with some restrictions, and then been on probation for five years. He also was ordered to pay $37,159 in investigation and prosecution costs.

Sheets had worked in the pharmacy of a Walnut Creek Safeway since August. Safeway had agreed to let him continue working in a non-pharmacy role during his suspension, Ezell said.

Sheets "wasn't happy with the result, but I didn't think he was despondent over it," his attorney said. "He had everything to live for and nothing to die for. He had a beautiful wife and two beautiful kids. He was a great young man. This was not something that would keep him back for long."

Sheets was an up-and-coming pharmacist when Horwitz, 62, recruited him with the promise that the younger man would eventually take over the business.

But Sheets, who had specialized in clinical work, had no experience in compounding medications or in retail pharmacy.

"I foolishly was led to believe that Doc's Pharmacy, being such a well- respected pharmacy and Dr. Horwitz being so well-revered by his colleagues, was following all practices to the letter of the law," he wrote the Board of Pharmacy after the meningitis tragedy.

Sheets had no direct involvement in compounding the tainted medicine, the reports say. He insisted to state officials that he could not be blamed because he had not been at the pharmacy when the drugs were compounded.

State officials found that Horwitz was ultimately responsible because he was the pharmacist in charge and established most of the pharmacy's practices.

"Mostly out of deference to and respect for Horwitz, he never thought to challenge established compounding procedures or to push hard for improved quality controls," officials found.

Read More