A nurse at a Phoenix nursing home who was assigned to care for a woman in a vegetative state who was raped and later gave birth to a child was charged on Wednesday with sexual assault, the police said.
Detectives at the Phoenix Police Department took the nurse, Nathan Sutherland, 36, in for questioning in the case on Tuesday, the police said, and collected a DNA sample from him that matched that of the child, a boy who was born on Dec. 29. Mr. Sutherland was being booked on Wednesday morning at the Maricopa County Jail on one charge of sexual assault and one charge of vulnerable adult abuse, the police said.
“Through a combination of good-old police work, combing through evidence, talking to people and following up on information, combined with the marvels of DNA technology, we were able to identify and develop probable cause to arrest a suspect,” Jeri L. Williams, the Police Department’s chief, said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Detectives started to focus on Mr. Sutherland because he was among the medical staff members at the nursing home, Hacienda HealthCare, who were assigned to care for the woman around the time last year that the police believe she was assaulted. The woman had been at the nursing home since 1992 and since then, had been in the same condition, unable to communicate or move, according to medical records. A lawyer for the family did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Mr. Sutherland, a licensed practical nurse, had worked at Hacienda since 2011 and was still working there as of Tuesday, the police said. He was fired soon after his arrest, the company said on Wednesday.
“Every member of the Hacienda organization is troubled beyond words to think that a licensed practical nurse could be capable of seriously harming a patient,” company officials said in a statement. “Once again, we offer an apology and send our deepest sympathies to the client and her family, to the community and to our agency partners at every level.”
Mr. Sutherland had “undergone an extensive background check upon hiring,” the company said.
Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a Phoenix police spokesman, suggested that Mr. Sutherland had not been cooperating with detectives. Sergeant Thompson noted that Mr. Sutherland offered a DNA sample only after he was shown a court order to do so and that he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination when he was arrested.
The details of the sexual assault had gripped the Phoenix region, spurred multiple investigations at Hacienda HealthCare and had become the top investigative concern in the Phoenix Police Department, according to the chief. As part of the investigations, detectives started to take DNA samples from all male employees at Hacienda earlier this month.
Mr. Sutherland’s DNA sample, taken Tuesday, was “checked, rechecked, triple-checked, quadruple-checked” by the department’s crime laboratory before Mr. Sutherland was arrested, Sergeant Thompson said.
A 911 call made at Hacienda on Dec. 29, which the police recently released, showed that the nursing home’s staff members were unaware that the woman had been pregnant. A woman who made the call reported that the baby was in distress.
On Wednesday, Sergeant Thompson said that the boy was doing well.