Prosecutors have said improperly installed portable air conditioners are one of the reasons heat rose to deadly levels inside the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills.
But, under cross examination, their own witness testified Thursday that the administrator charged with nine counts of aggravated manslaughter played no role in how those units were hooked up.
Other than keeping the units in storage, and obtaining more after Hurricane Irma knocked out power to the center’s chiller in September 2017, former administrator Jorge Carballo was not involved in the installation of what are called spot coolers.
Former nursing home porter Mark Miller testified only he and the home’s then-maintenance director connected the units so that hot exhaust was fed into the space above ceilings. Miller said they thought that was the proper and safe way of connecting the units.
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In opening statements, a prosecutor told jurors that turned the second floor — where all nine of those who died were housed — into an oven.
In addition to ordering the spot coolers, brining in industrial sized fans, repeatedly calling or having others call FPL and the governor to have power restored, Carballo is seen on video trying to direct the cooler air at his residents.
He also showed employees how to make sure the spot coolers continued to work properly, according to employee testimony on Wednesday.
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To prove their case, the state must persuade the six-person jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Carballo was more than just negligent, but showed reckless disregard for human life in a "gross and flagrant" manner.
Two of the employees who testified had been charged with falsifying records after the fact to show residents were in better shape than they actually were, but they said Carballo had nothing to do with them doing that.
Those charges and aggravated manslaughter charges against those two and a third employee were dropped by the state a few weeks before trial, leaving Carballo as the only defendant.
The defense told jurors the state was making Carballo a "scapegoat" — someone blamed for the wrongdoing or mistakes of others.
Electricity to the center air conditioning system — but not the rest of the facility — went out when a fuse became dislodged atop a FPL transformer pole when Irma hit on Sunday Sept. 10.
In the early morning of Wednesday Sept. 13, residents started showing signs of distress and some died, prompting nursing supervisors from the adjacent Memorial Regional hospital to call for an evacuation.
After seeing the evacuations and death play out on television, FPL finally ordered crews to the scene, where they reconnected the fuse in about 45 minutes, an FPL manager testified.
