MONROE COUNTY, Fla. – A former Monroe County Fire Rescue chief flight nurse for the Trauma Star helicopter program has been arrested on accusations that she was stealing narcotics, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office announced Tuesday.
Lynda Rusinowski, 56, faces two counts of grand theft of a controlled substance, two counts of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud and two counts of official misconduct.
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“I was deeply troubled to learn of this situation, but I can assure you that I will take whatever actions are necessary to ensure Trauma Star continues its critical life-saving operations,” Sheriff Rick Ramsay said in a statement.
According to Adam Linhardt, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, Monroe County Fire Rescue officials alerted the sheriff’s office in late July about missing narcotics and discrepancies in their controlled substances logs.
He said detectives discovered during their investigation that “Rusinowski stole Morphine and Versed and then altered or falsified records in an attempt to conceal the thefts.”
According to authorities, Rusinowski admitted to stealing the drugs.
“The Trauma Star program is a partnership between the Sheriff’s Office, Fire Rescue, and the Monroe County Board of County Commissioners,” Linhardt said in a news release. “The Sheriff’s Office staffs the pilots while the flight nurses and flight paramedics are staffed by Fire Rescue.”
The investigation remains ongoing.