A Nurse Allegedly Cut Off a Patient’s Foot, Hoped to Use It to Scare Kids

A nurse allegedly amputated a patient's foot without permission and hoped to have it taxidermied and displayed to children as a warning to “wear your boots." 

Wisconsin police allege that Mary K. Brown amputated a foot from a 60-year-old man who resided in the Pierce County, Wisconsin hospice care centre she worked at. He had fallen in his home and the heat went out causing his feet to become frostbitten and necrotic (essentially rotting). According to a criminal complaint obtained by VICE News, a nurse described the feet as being “foul-smelling”, only being held on by bits of skin and “several white tendons”, and being “black like a mummy.”

According to one of the nurses interviewed in the criminal complaint, Brown was changing the bandages on the man's feet and she remarked on why the foot was still there. Brown, despite not having an order from a doctor, allegedly then made the decision to amputate the foot. The amputation was not done in secret and several nurses were there to aid Brown and comfort the victim. 

Brown and two other nurses cut off the man’s foot by using gauze scissors, and they first had to cut through the skin and then used the scissors to sever the tendon on May 27, according to the complaint. One of the nurses who saw it described it as “not a very good amputation.” 

Whereas Brown claimed the elderly man didn’t feel any pain when it occurred, another nurse present said the patient held her hand tightly and moaned when it was removed. A nurse said that she spoke to the man a few days later and he “stated that when they cut his foot off he felt everything and it hurt very bad.”

Brown does not dispute that the amputation took place and told officers she did it for the victim’s “dignity and comfort” but admitted she should have consulted a doctor. Brown told the officers that the man “always complained about the smell and that it was her thought that he would like it better” if the foot was cut off, the complaint says.

According to the criminal complaint, after cutting off the foot the nurses didn’t really know what to do with the newly freed appendage. Eventually the nurses decided to put the foot into a zip lock bag, then a biohazard bag and leave it in the freezer they kept in the basement. Brown, according to several nurses interviewed in the criminal complaint, had a different idea.

“(One nurse) stated that Brown came up to her after she cut the foot off and apologized and stated that her intent was to help (victim’s name redacted) and give him some dignity, and that her family has a taxidermy shop and she was going to preserve the foot and put it on display with a sign that said “wear your boots kids,’” reads the criminal complaint. 

This was something several of the nurses aware of the idea described as “weird.” 

The case was first flagged to police after the county's medical examiner noticed the patient, who passed away several months after the amputation, had his foot laid beside his body rather than being attached. 

Brown has been charged with intentionally causing great bodily harm and mayhem. Both charges are modified as elder abuse which may bring stiffer penalties. She will next appear in court on December 6.