US: Sentencing delayed for fired VA staffer who killed 7 patients with fatal doses of insulin

Sentencing has been delayed for a former staffer at a veterans hospital in West Virginia who pleaded guilty to intentionally killing seven patients with fatal doses of insulin.

A federal judge on Friday granted a motion by attorneys for Reta Mays to push back her sentencing. It now will be held May 11-12. It had been scheduled for Feb. 18-19.

Prosecutors had opposed the request as unreasonable.

Mays, a former nursing assistant at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg, was charged with seven counts of second-degree murder and one count of assault with the intent to commit murder of an eighth person. She admitted in July to purposely killing the veterans, injecting them with unprescribed insulin while she worked overnight shifts at the hospital in northern West Virginia between 2017 and 2018.

She faces life sentences in each death.

Defense attorneys said the coronavirus pandemic has limited travel and the ability to meet with Mays in jail. In addition, the defense said it needs to obtain Mays' records from the federal government and secure an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder prior to sentencing.