MERRITT ISLAND, Fla. – After a months-long investigation, a Merritt Island Surgery Center nurse was arrested Tuesday for systematically stealing fentanyl meant to be used as an anesthetic during operations, News 6 partner Florida Today reported.
Officers say Kirsten McDonough, a 51-year-old Rockledge woman, would sign out twice as much fentanyl as the anesthesiologist needed and keep the excess for herself. If a patient needed one ampules of fentanyl, McDonough would sign out two and keep one, according to police reports.
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Office staff at the surgery center soon noticed the discrepancy between how much McDonough was signing out and how much was actually being used during operations. Police were called on Dec. 1 of last year after an audit was conducted.
McDonough was immediately suspended without pay when the investigation began.
In all, police said McDonough stole 67 ampoules — amounting to 134 milliliters — of fentanyl along with one vial of versed and one vial of propofol, other drugs used during surgeries. She was arrested on a charge of grand theft of a controlled substance and has been released on bond.
McDonough declined to be interviewed by police, and investigators have not said what she may have been doing with the fentanyl after it was stolen.
Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency. Because less than a few milligrams are needed to provide a high much stronger than those traditional narcotics, fentanyl is used to bolster heroin or create counterfeit pain pills — with deadly ramifications.
In Florida alone, 4,728 people died of opioid-related overdoses in 2016, the last year for which data is available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And in the past five years, law enforcement agencies have encountered increasing amounts of fentanyl on the streets — less than 2,000 fentanyl-related cases were reported in 2013 but over 14,000 were reported in 2015.
Brevard County Sheriff's Office spokesman Tod Goodyear said that while the Space Coast hasn't seen a tremendous amount of fentanyl use, its strength alone is cause for worry among law enforcement officers around the county.
"Nationwide, people are using it to cut heroin with. Depending on the potency, it's dangerous to even touch it," Goodyear said.