Daniel Clarke, 26, visits the site where he sustained life-threatening injuries in a vehicle crash in Rogue River on June 21, 2023. Tiffany Clarke, left, was recently contacted by the Medford Police Department and informed that evidence had been uncovered indicating that her son was one of an undetermined number of victims of a hospital nurse alleged to have diverted patients' prescription fentanyl and replaced it with non-sterile tap water. Jamie Lusch / Rogue Valley Times

On June 21, 2023, 26-year-old Daniel Clarke was severely injured when he crashed his Toyota 4-Runner into a ditch outside Rogue River High School. He never imagined that a second near-death experience would occur at the hospital where he was taken for life-saving care.

Contacted by Medford police detectives last week, Clarke was informed he was one of the latest alleged victims to be identified in an ongoing drug-diversion investigation at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford. Clarke is the first alleged victim who survived to speak with the Rogue Valley Times.

Launched after Asante officials first contacted police in December, the investigation centers around allegations that a hospital nurse replaced prescription fentanyl with non-sterile tap water. At least one lawsuit has been filed that connects the nurse’s alleged actions to a death.

Medford police have disclosed few details about the investigation, and no arrests have been made, but local law firms have reported dozens of clients who have been told they or family members may have been victims.

Interviews by the Rogue Valley Times with families of alleged victims identified by hospital officials indicate a timeline of deaths occurring between November 2022 and July 2023, though the law firms are representing clients who were affected, or whose family members were affected, even earlier.

A civil suit, filed in recent weeks by Central Point attorney Justin Idiart, alleges Medford RN Dani Marie Schofield, named as a co-defendant along with Asante, caused 65-year-old Horace “Buddy” Wilson’s death by replacing the fentanyl in his IV with tap water.

Wilson fell from a ladder Jan. 27, 2022, and was admitted to the Medford hospital with a lacerated spleen and broken ribs. In the following weeks, he developed persistent, treatment-resistant sepsis and eventually experienced multi-system organ failure, dying Feb. 25.

State agencies show the hospital reported an unusual spike in central line infections during 2022 and 2023 — 15 and 14 per year compared to 1 to 3 in a typical year, though law firms say they anticipate the final victim count will be much higher.

Daniel Clarke, who lives in Talent, said he’s felt every emotion from shame and anger to gratitude as a result of his ordeal.

Adopted out of the foster care system as a baby along with his two brothers, Daniel Clarke had faced what seemed an endless number of challenges, culminating in heavy drug use two years ago.

When his brother Larry died Sept. 28, 2020, Daniel Clarke used meth a final time, he said, before deciding to make a change. Larry’s death was ruled a suicide, though he had been attacked twice in the months before his death; the bullet that killed him entered the back of his head, leaving his family with more questions than answers.

Still grappling with his brother’s death and reeling from a recent breakup, Daniel Clarke was dulling his pain with alcohol the night of the crash.

“I had lost my brother, and I had just constantly been going through stuff in my life ever since I was born,” he said.

“I know it happens to everyone — everyone goes through s— in their life — but sometimes it feels like it keeps knocking you down every time you get up. I was going through all this self-hatred in my head and decided to get super drunk and get in my car and drive.”

The crash

His parents, Rogue River residents Tiffany and Bobby Clarke, saw social media reports of a crash on East Evans Creek Road that night. Tiffany Clarke knew her son frequented a bar after work that closed at 10 p.m.

“I had a weird feeling. I talked to him three times that day, then he stopped answering my texts. I saw on the Wimer (Facebook) page there was a really bad accident. It was like 10:15 p.m. My heart sank. I said, ‘That’s Danny.’”

Clarke was taken to Asante’s Medford hospital with broken bones and a host of injuries. But his health struggles were just beginning.

Pain medication only seems to offer intermittent relief, and an unexplained infection would soon set in his bloodstream.

“We walked into the trauma room, and he had a neck brace on and chest tubes in. His leg was shattered. He broke his sternum. It was awful … His jaw was wired shut for six weeks, and he still can’t really walk correctly,” Tiffany Clarke said.

“They were giving him different things for his anxiety. They would say he wasn’t due for more pain meds yet, but you could see he was clearly in pain and clearly agitated. I remember he kept trying to pull his vent out and you could tell he was in a lot of pain. It was absolutely heartbreaking. He didn’t even want them to draw his blood because it was painful for them to touch him.”

Tiffany Clarke refused to leave the hospital until Daniel, recovering from multiple surgeries and against the advice of doctors, asked to be discharged three weeks later.

“I didn’t leave until he did. He was lying there, two doors down from where his brother died. … I slept in that f—— chair the whole time,” Tiffany Clarke said.

“The nurses were like, ‘I’m sorry but we don’t let people stay in the ICU.’ I said, ‘You don’t understand. I already lost a son. I’m not leaving.’ The detective said he believed if I hadn’t stayed there, Danny probably wouldn’t have come out alive.”

‘She was so overly friendly’

Tiffany Clarke remembers one of the nurses being friendlier than the others.

“She wore blue Danskos. I remember, because I had the same shoes. She was so overly friendly, (a friend) joked with me that, ‘She’s, like, hitting on your son.’ She was overly nice when the others were like, ‘Dude, you’re not getting more pain medicine.’”

As he began to recover, Daniel Clarke worried about getting hooked on the drugs he only seemed to be getting at random times.

“The last few days I was in the ICU, I was awake, and the pain was really just … terrible. But, at the same time, with my history of drug abuse … when it came to them putting fentanyl and Dilaudid (hydromorphone, a type of opioid) in my IV bag, I told them I just wanted them to stop giving them to me,” he said.

“I kind of wonder if that isn’t maybe what saved me.”

Knowing now that his medication was allegedly being tampered with, Daniel Clarke struggles to accept that a nurse’s alleged actions may have caused him further suffering.

“It’s a lot to mentally comprehend,” he said.

Once at home — in a wheelchair, his jaw wired shut — Daniel Clarke spent three weeks battling a relentless infection.

“He kept getting these infections. He had two chest tube holes. They were infected and we couldn’t get them cleared up, so we had to keep calling even after he was discharged. When you go back and look at everything now, it makes sense,” Tiffany Clarke said.

Medford police contacted her March 15 and said Daniel, who they identified as a victim, would be asked to testify before a grand jury.

Asante officials reached out March 19.

“The hospital called and said he might be a victim and that they want him to go in and get some bloodwork done,” Tiffany Clarke said.

“I told them, ‘Nice try.’ (Medford police) already called.”

Given the stories surfacing in recent months of alleged drug-diversion victims who didn’t survive, Daniel Clarke said he’s still trying to process everything that’s happened to him.

“I’ve sat down with myself since my crash and thought about why I did what I did and why what happened … happened. One piece of is it the self-harm aspect. I was in just such a terrible place in my mind at that moment that I tried to hurt myself, which leaves me wondering why I survived.”

He reflected, “It seems like there are signs from the universe I should still be here.”