Late Klamath Falls resident Roberta Porter is pictured with her son Shawn in July 2020. The 71-year-old was admitted to Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center in early December 2022 with breathing problems. Porter's cause of death was reported as multi-system organ failure, severe sepsis with shock and acute cholangitis, most commonly caused by a bacterial infection of the bile ducts. 

Another family has come forward to discuss the death of a loved one at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center amid a Medford police investigation into a former employee alleged to have stolen controlled substances prescribed to patients and possibly caused “adverse patient care.”

Medford police have disclosed few details of the investigation, launched after Asante contacted authorities in early December regarding a patient death. The FBI in Portland has said it is aware of the investigation but did not comment further.

Hospital officials said they were “distressed” to learn of the situation but also would not provide further comment while the investigation is underway.

Two families spoke previously to the Rogue Valley Times about loved ones who died after developing infections while receiving care in the Medford hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. Both families said Asante informed them that a nurse had allegedly replaced pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl with non-sterile tap water.

Several additional families have reached out to the Times, which first learned of the investigation Dec. 23. Some said they aren’t ready to speak publicly.

However, in a Friday interview, Shawn Porter, of Phoenix, Arizona, told the Times that his mother, Roberta Porter — a 71-year-old Klamath Falls native and member of the Klamath Tribes — was admitted to the hospital in early December 2022 and died of a serious infection.

Porter said hospital officials and law enforcement told him that “dozens of patients” were impacted by the nurse’s alleged actions. Multiple hospital sources, who declined to be identified, have also told the Times that dozens of patients were injured by the nurse’s alleged medication diversion.

Porter said his mother, the second youngest of 16 children in her family who grew up in the Klamath Basin, was gradually improving during her first week at the hospital, even joking with nurses, before her condition took an unexpected turn. Roberta Porter died Dec. 18, 2022.

“Mom had been in the hospital since early December,” Porter said. “Saturday, Dec. 10, a doctor from the hospital calls and said, ‘Hey, your mom is not in great shape. We had to intubate her yesterday.'”

Porter said he called constantly to check on his mother. Her condition didn’t improve. He then got another call from the hospital.

“They said, ‘You’re going to want to get down here,’” he recalled. “I drove straight over to California and up the entire way. The night of Dec. 17, after practically sliding down Mt. Ashland in my car, I got to the hospital.”

The last time he had been able to talk to his mother had been Thanksgiving. “You can’t talk to somebody when they’re intubated,” he said.

When he arrived, “she was definitely out of it,” he said. “You could see the jaundice. … She had infection spreading all over.”

Porter said he made the difficult decision to remove his mother from life support. His only sibling, a brother who lived in the Portland area, was unable to make it down in time.

“I talked to my brother and said, ‘Is there any way you can get down here?'” Porter recalled. “He couldn’t make it, but I don’t think he grasped how dire everything was. I told him she wasn’t coming back. Then I put the phone down on Mom’s shoulder and said, ‘Take five to 10 minutes and say what you need to say, and what you want to say.’ I left the room and went back in 10 minutes later.”

His mother died almost as soon as the machines keeping her alive were unplugged, Porter said.

“That’s what the doctor said it would be,” Porter added. “I had asked, ‘If you pulled all (life support), would it be a couple hours? A couple days?’ He said, ‘It would be minutes.’”

A year later, Porter said it felt like a “punch in the gut” to get a phone call just before Christmas and learn from hospital officials that his mother’s death could have been due to a nurse tampering with his mother’s pain medication. It made him especially miss his Christmas Day phone call to his mother.

“She was a fun lady,” he said. “She would crack jokes. She was a little firecracker. She loved to laugh, and she would get little jabs in and just loved to have fun. She was very whimsical and caring.”

He remembers talking with nurses who were treating her.

“They said she was having fun and would say things like, ‘You may like this or that, but I’m rock-and-roll.’ Some of the nurses dealing with her, before she was put under, were talking about her spirit and her energy and how she was getting better … Then it all just turned on a dime. It went from recovery to descent.”

Porter said it was upsetting that hospital officials and police have released limited information, and that no arrest has been made.

The Times also interviewed family members of former Grants Pass resident Samuel Allison and Klamath Falls resident Barry Samsten.

Grants Pass resident Garrett Atwood received a phone call Dec. 18 informing him that his 36-year-old brother’s death, on Nov. 11, 2022, had allegedly been caused by a central line infection resulting from a hospital nurse replacing fentanyl with non-sterile tap water.

A combat veteran, Allison entered the hospital Oct. 14, 2022, for liver failure. His condition had stabilized when he presented with an infection, was transferred to Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, and died days later.

Klamath Falls resident Diane Rogers said she was contacted by Asante officials Nov. 24 that the July 26 death of her husband, 74-year-old Barry Samsten, had allegedly been caused by the same thing.

Porter, meanwhile, said he was “heartbroken” to hear of other victims in the case, especially the younger ones.

“My mom wasn’t 30 years old, in perfect health, trying to take over the world,” he said. “She had run a lot of her race, but she was a fighter. She had been fighting pretty much my entire life with medical things, and she always won.”

He said, “To see this happen so rapidly — it never sat well with me. And then a year later to have these revelations. …

“You kind of just come to the acceptance of, ‘Maybe it was just her time.’ But no. Someone else decided it was her time, and that’s what’s really sticking in my craw and keeping me awake at night.”