GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. — A Greenwood Village plastic surgeon and former nurse anesthetist who now face charges in the 2020 death of a woman after she was given anesthesia for surgery gave conflicting stories about what happened and appeared to be blaming each other for what went wrong, an arrest affidavit says.
The Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office said on Wednesday that they obtained arrest warrants for Dr. Geoffrey Kim, 52, and former nurse anesthetist Rex Meeker in connection with the death of 18-year-old Emmalyn Nguyen.
“I think the family has mixed feelings about this. Obviously, they are overwhelmingly happy that finally there will be some justice for Emmalyn, but at the same time, this brings up the whole ordeal all over again and it kind of has reawakened the trauma they went through," said David Woodruff, who is the attorney for Nguyen’s family.
"At the end of the day, I think they’re glad to see this happening, and it’s encouraging that the legal system is pursuing this," Woodruff said.
The sheriff's office said Kim is charged with first-degree aggravated assault and criminally negligent homicide. He turned himself in to authorities on Wednesday, the sheriff's office said and was released after posting bond.
Meeker is facing a manslaughter charge. He turned himself in to the sheriff's office on Friday as expected and was booked on that charge and released.
Deputies said Nguyen went in for a surgical procedure at Colorado Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery on Aug. 1, 2019, and went into cardiac arrest after being administered anesthesia. She fell into a coma and died 14 months later, deputies said.
According to the affidavit, it's unclear how much anesthesia Nguyen was actually given because Meeker's notes in the chart are illegible. The document also notes CPR was performed between two and four times at the plastic surgery center.
A nurse who was interviewed reported that she, Meeker, and other staff members made "multiple requests" to call 911. She said Kim "would not initially agree" to that and assured staff that Nguyen would wake up "if given some additional time," the affidavit says.
The document goes on to say that Nguyen was given nine separate doses of anesthetic reversal agents, including Narcan, over a one-hour period. An anesthesia expert told investigators that in his 40-year career he has never given a second dose of Narcan. He told investigators that employees should have recognized they needed help when they got no response from the first dose, according to the affidavit.
He said the most doses he has seen given to reverse anesthetics is two, the affidavit says.
“There are very few criminal cases filed against surgeons for botched operations and it tells us there is something more going on here than just mere negligence,” said 9NEWS legal expert Scott Robinson.
On Aug. 15, 2019, Nguyen's mother went to police and stated that her daughter was in the hospital with brain damage and that she believed Kim "had caused her to be there," the affidavit says.
She reported that she went to the surgery center on the day of the procedure around 4 p.m. to pick up her daughter because the procedure was only supposed to last roughly two hours. She reported, according to the affidavit, that the office staff told her that her daughter's heart rate had dropped but that she was "fine."
The office staff also told her that the procedure had never started and would need to be rescheduled.
At one point, Kim came out to the waiting room and also told Nguyen's mother she was "fine" but said it was taking longer than expected for her to wake up, the affidavit says.
At roughly 7:30 p.m., Kim told her mother it was time to call 911, the affidavit says. Her mother reported that she was never told CPR was performed and said the first time she heard that was from a nurse at the hospital, the document says.
She reported to police that she spoke to both Kim and Meeker who were told "different versions" of what happened and appeared to be blaming each other, the affidavit says.
Nguyen's mother said Kim told her that he didn't tell her about the CPR because he was "trying to prevent her from going into shock," the affidavit says.
Investigators spoke with the ER doctor who treated Nguyen after she was transported to the hospital and he reported that Kim initially told him he was transferring a patient there to be "observed" while medication wore off, the affidavit says.
The ER doctor said he thought it was strange that an 18-year-old went into cardiac arrest and after his first evaluation said he felt things were "abnormal," according to the affidavit.
He went on to say that Kim initially reported that Nguyen had gone into cardiac arrest in front of multiple people and was "directly" transferred to the hospital, the document says.
However, just before 9 p.m., after another conversation with Kim, the ER doctor reported that Kim said, "Oh, actually, this happened four hours ago," which prompted him to immediately order a CAT scan.
He said that is something he would have done sooner if he had known she had not been awake for hours, the affidavit says.
When asked if he believed Kim had deliberately misled him, he said he didn't know, but went on to say it "seemed like it had to have been deliberate."
He said in his professional opinion 911 should have been called "immediately" when Nguyen went into cardiac arrest.
“The family’s primary interest in seeing this criminal case being pursued is to make sure this doesn’t ever happen to anyone else. What happened to Emmalyn was totally avoidable and inexcusable," Woodruff said.
He added, "It did involve elements of recklessness by the providers involved and they just don’t want to see this happen again. They don’t want any other family to have to go through this kind of trauma."
Court records show Kim's Colorado medical license was briefly suspended in January 2020, as a result of the incident involving Nguyen. The next month it was reinstated but put on probation for a three-year period, during which, Kim was only allowed to perform procedures that required "general anesthesia and conscious sedation with an anesthesiologist present and on-site," the document says.
That anesthesiologist is required to be a licensed physician with no prior disciplinary history and must report back to the state medical board on a quarterly basis.
Meeker agreed to permanently relinquish his certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) in December 2021, while facing discipline from the state board of nursing related to the incident involving Nguyen.
He also agreed to never apply for a type of licensure granted by that board.
That disciplinary report indicates that Nguyen went into cardiac arrest around 2:20 p.m. and at one point Meeker recommended to the surgeon that she be transferred to a hospital. That same document though says that a 911 call was not made until 7:35 p.m. and Nguyen never regained consciousness.
If convicted, both could face significant prison time, 9NEWS legal expert Scott Robinson said.
Dr. Kim appeared on KUSA's paid programming Colorado and Company in the past.
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