A breast cancer oncologist at a famed Texas medical institution has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for lacing the coffee of a colleague with whom she was having a romantic affair.
Ana Maria Gonzalez-Angulo was convicted last week of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon on a family member in connection with the 2013 poisoning of George Blumenschein, a fellow doctor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Defense attorneys had argued for probation, saying a prison term would be a waste given Gonzalez-Angulo’s work.
“She could still be a researcher, looking for ways to cure breast cancer,” attorney Derek Hollingsworth told jurors, according to the Houston Chronicle. “Or she could sit in a jail cell, be a ward of the state.”
Gonzalez-Angulo didn’t react during Monday’s sentencing, according to the Associated Press. But on Tuesday, Hollingsworth told The Post: “She is devastated. She’s emotionally distraught.”
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Assistant Harris County District Attorney Justin Keiter commended the jury for its decision, noting that it probably wasn’t easy to send a doctor who works to cure cancer to prison.
“We felt that it was extremely important that she be treated like anyone else,” he said in a phone interview. “That’s the beautiful thing about the criminal justice system.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/national/health-science/doctor-gets-10-years-for-poisoning-lover/2014/09/29/f46b38de-1a2a-4432-a570-be7e6dd1a1b5_video.html
Share this articleShareAuthorities believed that Gonzalez-Angulo, 43, spiked Blumenschein’s coffee with ethylene glycol, a chemical found in antifreeze, the Chronicle reported. Blumenschien noticed that it was unusually sweet, and was later hospitalized. He survived the incident but suffered significant kidney damage.
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“It’s just hard reliving this,” Blumenschein told the court during Gonzalez-Angulo’s trial, according to the newspaper. “Because I almost died.”
Blumenschein’s longtime girlfriend also testified, and a jury heard recorded conversations between Blumenschein and the defendant, which were taped after the incident.
“It’s too late, she won,” Gonzalez-Angulo said during one conversation, the Chronicle reported. “You go on, have a kid and I’ll leave. It’ll be fine.”
Gonzalez-Angulo worked with patients one day each week and spent the rest of her week doing clinical and lab research. Her research, according to her MD Anderson Cancer Center biography, focused “on mechanisms of resistance to standard breast cancer therapies, and on the development of markers to predict response to treatments using functional proteomics.”
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The onetime Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Fellow talked about her research in a video posted two years ago on the “KomenfortheCure” YouTube channel:
Gonzalez-Angulo resigned from the Texas medical center when the verdict was announced, a spokesman for the facility said.
Keiter said that Gonzalez-Angulo was also fined $10,000, and must serve half her time before she’s eligible for parole.
“It just goes to show you it doesn’t matter who you are,” Keiter said, “it matters what you do.”
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