A Tripler Army Medical Center employee, arrested Friday for allegedly stealing narcotics from the hospital by fraudulently using about 65 patient identities, was charged Tuesday in federal court.
The employee, Olivia Ronquilio, was charged by criminal complaint with possession of oxycodone and hydrocodone, which are Schedule II controlled substances, with the intent to distribute the opioid drugs.
The hospital’s March 10 discovery of a shortage of 10 hydrocodone/acetaminophen tablets was allegedly linked to Ronquilio and led to a further investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), according to a deputy sheriff/DEA task force officer’s affidavit supporting the complaint.
The investigation revealed Ronquilio allegedly used her unique identifier and fingerprint to access Tripler’s automated drug dispensing vault for about 65 patients.
But the Tripler pharmacy staff compared the automated dispensing system with a patient file database and found no legitimate prescriptions for those transactions, the affidavit said.
Tripler reported Thursday that after taking inventory it found 8,505 tablets of narcotics missing and reported it to the Army Criminal Investigation Division Drug Suppression Team, which notified the DEA and asked for its help.
The DEA task force officer Friday reviewed the surveillance footage from December to March 10. He saw Ronquilio use her login to remove various types of narcotics from the vault, create fake prescriptions and hide “the pilfered prescription narcotics until she departed the facility at the end of her workday,” the affidavit said.
DEA task force officers arrested Ronquilio at 10:36 p.m. Friday, and after investigators advised her of her Miranda rights, she reportedly stated she used her login to access Tripler’s drug vault to remove narcotics without a valid prescription and gave them to another person.
The government also asked the court to detain Ronquilio without bail because she could face 10 or more years for the drug charges.
Nanakuli pedestrian fatality is ID’d
The Honolulu Medical Examiner’s office identified Tuesday a pedestrian who was killed after being struck by a vehicle in Nanakuli over the weekend as 74-year-old Maderson Elwin of Waianae.
Police said it was raining heavily when Elwin was struck by a town-bound vehicle being driven by a 50-year-old Waianae man at about 3:45 a.m. Saturday.
Elwin was in the roadway with no marked crosswalk near him when he was hit, and he died at the scene, police said.
Police closed part of Farrington Highway near Kahe Power Plant to investigate the incident.
It was Oahu’s 16th traffic fatality this year compared with nine at this time last year.
