LSU expels 27 students for flouting COVID rules, embattled nursing home owner vows to appeal license revocation

The Advocate's Top Headlines

with Jennifer Wadsworth | Assistant metro editor

Good morning.

Embattled nursing home magnate Bob Dean says he plans to fight public health officials who revoked his licensing and Medicaid deals. And though facing a mountain of civil litigation, his lawyer says none of the allegations against him rise to the level of criminality.

In this story, Andrea Gallo writes about the businessman's plans to appeal the state's actions.

Meanwhile, reporter David Mitchell dug up some interesting backstory about the remote warehouse in Independence where the nursing home evacuees were found in squalid conditions after Hurricane Ida.

Turns out, the site used to be a pesticide plant and is still under a decades-long clean-up order because of lingering contamination.

Instead of telling patients about the site's history, however, a new lawsuit claims Dean misrepresented it as a defunct Febreze factory or Fruit of the Loom warehouse.

Considering all of the toxic chemicals mixed at the facility for decades, one of its former chemists balked at the idea of sleeping on its floor as nearly 850 medically fragile evacuees did under Dean's care.

"Hell to the no, hell to the no," the chemist told us. "You don't know what they spilled on that floor years ago.”

Click here to read Mitchell's story on the past life of the controversial property.

While the Louisiana Department of Public Health wrangles with Dean, it's continuing to battle the pandemic, which claimed the life of yet another child, officials said Friday.

This brings Louisiana's pediatric COVID death toll to 15.

"Every life lost is a tragedy," LDH chief medical officer Dr. Joseph Kanter said. "Our young children who are not eligible to get the vaccine rely on us to protect them, and the best way we can do that is to get the vaccine and wear a mask."

To prevent COVID's spread among college-aged students, LSU is expelling 27 for failing to comply with pandemic protocol. University spokesman Ernie Ballard said the number of students who faced expulsion went from more than 1,000 to 400 to 78 and finally 27 after numerous warnings over the course of this past week. Caroline Savoie got the scoop.

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