Lab chief faces sentencing in Michigan 12 years after fatal US meningitis outbreak

HOWELL, Mich. (AP) — Days after a routine injection to ease back pain, Donna Kruzich and a friend drove across the border to Canada in 2012 to see end-of-summer theater in Stratford, Ontario.

The 78-year-old Michigan woman suddenly became ill and returned home. By early October, she was dead.

“Most of the time she could not communicate with us. She was basically in a coma,” son Michael Kruzich recalled. “We knew she had meningitis — but we didn’t know how she got it.”

Evidence soon emerged: Donna Kruzich was one of at least 64 people in the U.S. who died because of tainted steroids made by a specialty pharmacy in Massachusetts. Nearly 12 years later, the operator of New England Compounding Center is returning to a Michigan court Thursday for his sentence for involuntary manslaughter.

Barry Cadden already is serving a 14 1/2-year sentence for federal crimes related to the extraordinary outbreak of fungal infections, which was traced to dirty conditions inside the lab and caused meningitis and other debilitating illnesses. More than 700 people in 20 states were sickened, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.