Dr. Geoffrey Kim, left, and Emmalyn Nguyen.Photo:Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, Courtesy of David Woodruff
Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, Courtesy of David Woodruff
A Colorado plastic surgeon was found guilty Wednesday of attempted reckless manslaughter in connection with the death of his teenage patient.
Geoffrey Kim was also found guilty of obstruction of telephone service for failing to call 911 for five hours after 18-year-old Emmalyn Nguyen went into cardiac arrest. He was acquitted of the more serious charge of negligent homicide, theDenver Postreported.
“The verdict is vindication for the family,” Nguyen family attorney David Woodruff tells PEOPLE. “It is finally justice. He had the opportunity to get her emergency medical help and stopped his entire staff from doing that. I think it is a reminder to the medical community that they are not above the law.”
“She was a wonderful girl and had her whole life ahead of her and to die so senselessly like this has been a real tragedy,” he adds.
Nguyen, then 18, was receiving anesthesia before breast augmentation surgery at Colorado Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery when she fell into a coma on Aug. 1, 2019. She never regained consciousness and died in a nursing home in October 2020 at the age of 19, prosecutors said.
Emmalyn Nguyen.David Woodruff
According to prosecutors, several medical staffers, including two nurses, asked permission to call 911 but Kim refused.
Rex Meeker, a nurse anesthetist who administered the anesthesia, testified in court that he told Kim, “We should send her to the hospital, and I added it’s standard operating procedure,” Meeker testified,KDVRreported.
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Meeker was originally charged in connection with her death but prosecutors dropped the charges, according to the Post.
Kim’s defense attorneys argued that Meeker was to blame and that it was the anesthesia he gave her that killed her, according to KDVR. Meeker later surrendered his license, according to the outlet.
In June of 2021, Kim and Meeker settled a wrongful death suit with Nguyen’s family. They both agreed to pay $1 million each, according toCBS News.
Kim is facing up to three years in prison, according to prosecutors.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 8.
source: people.com
