Woman charged with stealing medication from nursing home residents [UPDATED]

Published 4:48pm Tuesday, April 5, 2011 Updated 1:27pm Tuesday, April 26, 2011
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A woman was charged on Monday with four counts of felony theft after allegedly stealing powerful prescription narcotics from four vulnerable adults while she was a nursing assistant at the Broen Memorial nursing home.

Heidi Ann Soland, 30 was also charged with one felony count of fifth degree drug possession, as well as four gross misdemeanor accounts of criminal neglect. She did not appear for a court hearing on Monday, and as of 1 p.m. Tuesday there was an active warrant out for her arrest.

According to the criminal complaint, Fergus Falls police were made aware of the theft of nine Duragesic patches from the Broen home on Feb. 1. The patches had been removed from four patients (each of them with some form of dementia) from October 2010 through January of this year. Broen administrators suspected Soland, who had been working at Broen as a nursing assistant and who, as far as administrators could determine, had been on duty during the times of all the thefts.

Duragesic patches contain fentanyl, a controlled substance often used as a painkiller. A narcotic, fentanyl is many times stronger than morphine.

On Feb. 2, Soland was interviewed by Fergus Falls police. During the interview, she allegedly admitted to removing the patches from the Broen residents and taking them for her own use. She allegedly said she was curious about the effects of the patches.

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