George Siano was a 60-year-old patient at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northport, New York, when events that federal prosecutors later charged were intentional took place. According to the indictment, a resident physician who began working at Northport in early July 1993 recorded a do not resuscitate order in Siano’s chart on or about July 26, 1993, after falsely telling staff that Siano’s family and attending physician had agreed to it. Prosecutors allege that the same day the resident administered an intravenous injection of epinephrine that caused cardiac arrest and killed Siano.

The indictment links this death to two other Northport patients alleged to have been killed that fall and to an assault on a fourth patient. The resident was suspended and terminated from the residency program in October 1993 after the program learned of a prior conviction. Years later the resident was federally charged in a multi-count indictment that included Siano’s murder; the defendant pleaded guilty in 2000 and received three consecutive life terms without parole for the killings at Northport.