Powers Convicted of Drugging Baby Girl

Former Encino hospital technician Randy Powers was found guilty Thursday of injecting an 11-month-old girl with a near-fatal dose of the heart drug lidocaine.

Van Nuys Superior Court Commissioner Alan B. Haber, who oversaw the 10-day, non-jury trial, handed down his verdict moments after attorneys in the case concluded their final arguments.

Haber found Powers, 26, guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, unlawful practice of medicine and child endangering for injecting Sarah Mathews of Van Nuys with a massive dose of lidocaine on Sept. 10, 1984. Powers’ mother was baby-sitting the child in the Powers home at the time.

Haber dismissed charges that Powers intended to cause great bodily injury to the baby. A charge of attempted murder was dropped last month.

Powers, who had been free on $20,000 bail, was ordered into sheriff’s custody until his sentencing. Deputy Dist. Atty. Michelle Rosenblatt, who prosecuted the case, said Powers faces as much as seven years in prison when he appears for sentencing July 10.

Powers remains under investigation in connection with the deaths of elderly patients at Queen of Angels Medical Center in Los Angeles and at Sherman Oaks Community Hospital, where he worked in 1983 and 1984, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Kelberg, head of the district attorney’s medical-legal section.

No charges have been filed against Powers in connection with those deaths, Kelberg said. He declined to discuss the findings of autopsies on five bodies exhumed last year.

Defense attorney Sammy Weiss said an independent coroner he hired to examine the test results discovered no evidence of foul play in the deaths.

In the case involving the baby, Rosenblatt argued during her closing statement that Powers injected Sarah to get “a little bit of glory. He was looking for recognition as the savior of a baby.�

Doctors testified that the child’s blood contained more than 20 times the amount of lidocaine that would be used to treat an adult. The drug, which is used as a local anesthetic and to control an irregular heartbeat, left the girl unconscious and in critical condition. She was released from the hospital in October but must still take anti-convulsive medication.

Confession Argument

Los Angeles Police Detective P. J. Quartararo testified during the trial that Powers signed a confession stating that he injected the baby with the drug and that he stole both the lidocaine and the syringe from Queen of Angels Medical Center in Los Angeles while he was a trainee there during the summer of 1983.

Powers, testifying in his own defense Wednesday, denied ever confessing anything to the detective and said the signature on the confession was not his.

Weiss accused doctors and nurses from Northridge Hospital Medical Center of injecting lidocaine into Sarah during her emergency treatment for seizures and then conspiring to frame Powers.

“I’m not sure whether this case should be called the Powers case or the Northridge Hospital cover-up,� Weiss said, noting that doctors testified the baby would have died without a plastic airway Powers inserted down her throat before he rushed her to the hospital.

The doctors and nurses involved in treating Sarah “have a motive to mislead the court and to protect their own behinds,� Weiss said. “I think they have a lot more to lose than Mr. Powers does.�

Weiss said Powers may file a civil suit against the district attorney’s office for “unwarranted accusations� in connection with the investigation of Powers’ alleged involvement with patient deaths at the two hospitals where he was employed as a respiratory therapist.