On Oct. 8, Leslie Ann Pope, a 54-year-old ICU nurse, was arrested and charged with felony offenses after Port St. Lucie police said she withdrew fluid from a patient’s fentanyl IV infusion at Cleveland Clinic Tradition Hospital. The critically ill patient’s relative, who had medical training, noticed the alleged shortfall.
Pope has denied the allegations. Investigators haven’t said what she allegedly intended to do with the drugs.
What Investigators Say Happened
The alleged first incident occurred June 24. Investigators say a patient’s family saw Pope use a syringe to withdraw fluid from the IV, pocket it and leave. The next evening, police say, Pope returned and approached the IV equipment. A family member stepped in.
Detectives later reviewed footage showing Pope manipulating protective caps on the equipment. They couldn’t determine whether she took more medication during the second attempt.
Police say Pope wasn’t assigned to the patient. She told them an alarm she described as an “upstream occlusion” required her to intervene with the IV. The patient’s significant other, who had experience working in a medical environment, disputed that explanation.
Brittany McNally, a public information officer with Port St. Lucie police, put it bluntly in comments to CBS 12. “But again, she’s not even assigned to that patient, so there was no initial justification for her to even be in that room at that time addressing that patient,” McNally said.
The Safeguard That Worked, and the One That Didn’t
The case turned on one person’s knowledge. “The family member actually was well versed in the medical field and had a history of working in that environment, which caused her to raise questions and caused her to notify the chain of command at the hospital,” McNally said.
That detail cuts two ways. A watchful relative stopped a second attempt and set the investigation in motion. But most families of ICU patients don’t have that background, and they shouldn’t need it to keep a loved one’s pain medication safe. The article’s account doesn’t say whether a hospital system flagged the alleged diversion before the family did.
The hospital conducted an internal investigation and contacted the Florida Department of Health, which notified police, McNally said. Police began investigating in August. Pope was arrested with help from the Palm Beach Marshals Task Force and charged with grand theft of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance without a prescription and fraudulently obtaining a controlled substance.
The Hospital’s Response
McNally said Pope had worked at the hospital for around six months. In a statement to CBS12 News, Cleveland Clinic said: “We take these allegations very seriously. The individual no longer works with us, and we are fully cooperating with law enforcement. Because this is an active investigation, we are unable to comment further at this time.”
The hospital didn’t say when Pope’s employment ended or whether it fired her. Nor did it say what, if anything, it has changed.
McNally declined to guess at motive. “We don’t want to speculate what she could be using it for, whether it’s personal or, you know, selling it,” she said. “We don’t have that information at this point.”
The New York Post said it contacted the Port St. Lucie Police Department and Cleveland Clinic Tradition Hospital for more information. Ella Morrison wrote the report, which cited CBS 12 reporting based on information from the Port St. Lucie Police Department.
Why This Matters:
Patients in intensive care can’t speak up for themselves. They depend on the people around them and on systems designed to protect them. Here, police say the person who spotted the alleged theft was a relative with medical experience, not a monitoring system. That raises a fair question about how well hospitals track controlled substances at the bedside and how quickly they act on warnings.
Oversight matters. Public agencies, including the Florida Department of Health and local police, handle oversight of drugs like fentanyl; those channels worked only after the family pushed. Hospitals that handle powerful opioids carry a duty to patients who can’t protect themselves. Whether Cleveland Clinic will say what it’s doing to meet that duty remains unanswered.
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- florida nurse
- fentanyl theft
- cleveland clinic
- port st. lucie
- grand theft
- controlled substance
- hospital investigation