While Cymbol's family believed he died naturally, the Pennsylvania Attorney General found that Pressdee administered a deadly insulin dose. Pressdee was fired by Sunnyview for beating inmates and personnel the day Cymbol died, according to the complaint.
The suit claimed the center should not have hired Pressdee, who was fired or departed from 10 medical facilities from 2018 to December 2022 for “abusive tendencies and behavior toward residents and staff.”
Sunnyview “consistently failed” to tell workers to report resident abuse and neglect despite her “troubling and erratic behavior”. Her mistreatment “pervade throughout the facility,” the complaint alleged.
The lawsuit said Sunnyview nursing staff saw residents Pressdee had access to “were passing away unexpectedly and/or under suspicious circumstances, causing the nursing staff to believe Pressdee had involvement in their deaths.”
But the facility “completely and repeatedly ignored staff and resident concerns pertaining to Pressdee’s treatment of residents.” The complaint states that the Pennsylvania Department of Health investigated the institution weeks after Cymbol's death and Pressdee's termination.
The complaint alleged Sunnyview Operating LLC and the center fired or punished staff who reported resident fatalities or Pressdee's behavior to the agency. The lawsuit claims she was arrested on May 24, 2023, for two Quality Life Services–Chicora resident insulin-induced hypoglycemia deaths.
She admitted injecting the residents to kill them and was charged with two criminal homicide counts, later elevated to first and third-degree murder.
She was charged with 17 attempted killings and 19 neglect of care-dependent adults for Butler, Allegheny, Westmoreland, and Armstrong county deaths in November. Phil DiLucente and Jim DePasquale, Pressdee's criminal lawyers, said they are not involved in the civil claims but that the former nurse may “pleads guilty to everything she is charged with” and that a status hearing is scheduled for May.
The families of Heather Pressdee's victims hired us to find out how she was able to work in these facilities despite her erratic, disturbing, and aggressive behavior, Brown's attorney, Peirce, said Wednesday. Our office's investigations continue to ask why these facilities accepted these tragedies.”
follow for more updates