Nurse

In a decision that proved trying even for the judge who made it, Joseph Weber, a Temple University graduate and former Germantown Academy swim coach, was sentenced Friday to serve three years and nine months to 7 1/2 years in prison for having a sexual affair with a 14-year-old girl. Decrying the excessive adulation of athletes and coaches and saying that Weber was "woefully deficient" in maturity, Montgomery County Court Judge Samuel W. Salus 2d ordered the 28-year-old Philadelphia man to undergo psychiatric care while incarcerated.

Police pressed a hunt yesterday for a bicycle bandit who pummeled a visiting nurse and stole her medical bags as she headed to see a patient in North Philadelphia. LuAnn Randall, 42, was beaten so badly she was hospitalized at Albert Einstein Medical Center after the attack Monday afternoon. Her condition could not be determined yesterday, but her husband, Chuck, told 6ABC News that she suffered facial fractures and was in "a lot of pain. " Police said the assailant pounced on Randall, a prenatal nurse, as she got out of her car to visit a pregnant woman on the 5900 block of Hutchinson Street in Fern Rock.

The nurse beat her 68-year-old patient to death for refusing to take his medication last year, and was prepared to take her medicine from the judge. "It was my duty to preserve life, not to end it," sighed a tearful Kathy Johnson, 45, to Common Pleas Judge Juanita Kidd Stout at her sentencing hearing. "I was his nurse. I had no right to take that man's life," Johnson added. "I still do not know how such a thing could have happened, and how I could have done it. " After defense lawyer Joel S. Moldovsky urged Stout to "look into the heart of the case, and the heart of the defendant, and see this was not a crime that was intended, and a crime that was sincerely regretted," Stout imposed a four-to-10-year prison term for third-degree murder.

Homicide detectives are seeking a 16-year-old in connection with last week's slaying of a Philadelphia Geriatric Center nurse. An arrest warrant was issued Friday for Yusef "Ali" Whitehead, of the 5000 block of North Seventh Street in Olney - the same neighborhood as the victim. Whitehead is being sought in the killing of Calma M. Calida, 49, a registered nurse, whose nude body was found in the Tacony Creek Park in the early-morning hours on Thursday. Investigators said at the time that Calida apparently had been intercepted by an assailant during her drive the night before from her Lower Olney home to the Philadelphia Geriatric Center, where her shift was to begin at 11 p.m. Two young men walking a macadam pathway spotted the body lying on its side on rocks in shallow water on the west bank of the creek a short distance from Bingham Street.

Police released a sketch yesterday of a man wanted for severely beating and robbing a visiting nurse in North Philadelphia and announced that a $1,000 reward had been posted for information leading to his arrest. Detectives said the nurse's medical bag, minus about $300 in cash and some personal belongings, was found on the 4300 block of Germantown Avenue, some distance from where she was attacked. The nurse, LuAnn Randall, was released from the hospital and returned to her home in South Jersey, where her husband, Chuck, said she was in a lot of pain and unable to eat solid food because of facial fractures.

Lisa Sebastian, a nurse and case manager, has been named employee of the month for September at Underwood-Memorial Hospital in Woodbury. Sebastian of Washington Township joined the hospital in 1992. She had been a floor nurse, charge nurse and nursing-shift supervisor until becoming a case manager. In that capacity, she works as a liaison with the patients' physicians, family and others to coordinate all in-hospital services. A graduate of Gloucester City High School and the Helene Fuld School of Nursing in Camden, she is pursuing a bachelor's degree in nursing at Immaculata College.

Regarding Bruno Richard Hauptmann and the Lindbergh baby, though I was a teenager at the time, I can recall the case as well as if it had happened yesterday. My father was a lawyer, and I can recall his comments on the stories as they appeared in the newspapers. The jury was taken out of the courtroom each day through a mob of angry citizens all clamoring for conviction as the jurors were conducted to their hotel rooms for the night. That must have at least influenced them a little.

Mary T. Porambo Manuszak, 48, of East Norriton Township, a registered nurse, died Saturday at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania from injuries suffered in a multivehicle accident three days earlier. Plymouth Township police said Mrs. Manuszak's 1990 Dodge Caravan was rear-ended by a car and pushed into the oncoming lane, where it met another car head-on, in the 500 block of Township Line Road about 7:15 a.m. April 5. The accident was being investigated. Mrs. Manuszak, a native of Summit Hill, Pa., graduated from Panther Valley High School in Lansford in 1969 and from Easton Hospital's School of Nursing in 1972.

Frances L. Robinson, a licensed practical nurse who ministered to the needs of everyone she met, died Tuesday. She was 63 and lived in the city's Nicetown section. Robinson, a graduate of the Beaumont School of Nursing, had worked at various hospitals in the city and for nearly 30 years was a nanny and private nurse for the family of Rabbi Sidney Greenberg. "She was a kind, honest, beautiful person you could trust with your life," said Gertrude Shwell, a friend of more than 30 years.

Services were to be held this morning for Dorothy H. Miller, a longtime volunteer at Lankenau Hospital, who died Monday. She was 87 and lived in Drexel Hill, Delaware County. For more than 40 years Miller served as a volunteer at the hospital and for a number of years worked in the gift shop. She especially enjoyed working with the gift cart and visiting the patients. She had once worked at the hospital as a nurse. The former Dorothy Hartwig, she was a 1922 graduate of the Lankenau School of Nursing and graduated from Lower Merion High School in 1919.

After 105 years, it can be tough to pick out a birthday present. But officials at the New Jersey Veterans Memorial Home in Vineland knew exactly what to get Frank Cuccia on Saturday. "The reason he says he's gotten to be 105 is because every day he would always eat a McDonald's hamburger," said Derick Glenn, special events coordinator at the home. So a Happy Meal it was. While the gift may have been small, there was still a big celebration for the World War II veteran, as the nursing home and local VFWs honored residents there for their service as part of National Nursing Home Week.

HARRISBURG - Public health nurses are the link between government and underserved communities: They spot disease and injury trends, dispense advice to new mothers, and act as first responders in health crises. The union representing public health nurses is suing the Corbett administration over a plan to close almost half of the state's 60 community health centers and lay off as many as 73 people - one-third of them nurses - steps the union claims will sever that link and further erode the health safety net. Commonwealth Court Senior Judge Keith Quigley on Thursday rejected the union's bid for a preliminary injunction to stop the closure of 26 clinics - virtually all in rural areas - even as its suit to halt the plan remains under consideration by the court.

Fire in Russia kills 38 patients MOSCOW - A fire raged through a psychiatric hospital outside Moscow early Friday, killing 38 people, including two nurses, emergency officials said. A third nurse managed to save two patients, and they were the only three believed to have survived, the state news agency RIA Novosti reported. Police said the fire was caused by a short circuit. - AP U.S. filmmaker held in Venezuela CARACAS, Venezuela - A 35-year-old filmmaker from California has been arrested by Venezuelan authorities who are accusing him of fomenting postelection violence on behalf of the U.S. government.

Marion P. Souder, 91, a registered nurse who assisted her husband in their family medical practice in Telford for 42 years, died Wednesday, April 10, in the skilled nursing unit of Peter Becker Community in Franconia Township. From 1947 until their retirement in 1989, Mrs. Souder and her husband, Francis R., worked side by side to treat patients from their office at 27 N. Main St. in the Montgomery County town. "Our house was right next to the office," said her son, Ronald L., also a physician.

Akheim Nurse of Allentown scored a three-round decision over Fast Lane's Maynard Turner at 178 pounds and was named outstanding boxer Saturday night at the Pennsylvania Golden Gloves Regional Tournament at Derby Ink Gardens, hosted by Joe Hand Boxing Gym. All 10 boxers who advanced out of Saturday's bouts will fight for state championships on Saturday at Reverb Night Club in Reading, hosted by the East Reading Boxing Club. The national Golden Gloves tournament will be May 12-18 in Salt Lake City.

TRENTON - At his sentencing hearings in 2006, serial-killer nurse Charles Cullen did not explain why he killed at least 29 hospital and nursing home patients in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He had told investigators they were mercy killings. But a prosecutor said Cullen was driven by a compulsion to kill and was no "angel of death. " In an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes , Cullen at first says he thought he was helping people by ending their suffering. Many of the victims of his lethal drug overdoses were old or gravely ill. But Cullen tells a different story when reminded that some victims were not close to death.

ANTHONY NIXON didn't realize what a fabulous mother he had until long after he had grown up and started to think about it. His mother, Rosemarie Nixon, wife of a prominent surgeon and mother of nine, was a paragon of old-fashioned duty and dedication. "We took it for granted that she got up before everybody else, took out the trash, did the shopping, cooked the meals, waxed the floors, encouraged her children to be the best they could be and never complained," Anthony said. "We didn't see anything odd or unusual about that.

Sister Clare Naughton, 87, a hospital nurse, supervisor, and administrator in the Philadelphia area for many years, died Sunday, April 7, of cancer at Assisi House in Aston, Delaware County. "Sister Clare was a gifted woman who never hesitated to use those gifts for others - whether it be in actual hands-on nursing, in hospital administration, or in actually overseeing the building of a new hospital," said Sister Ann Marie Slavin, a spokeswoman for the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia.

THERESA TAFFE would give you her last penny. Her generosity and loving concern for others charmed family and friends. As a registered nurse, Theresa was able to express that love and concern to the patients of Lankenau Hospital, where she worked for many years. She died March 27 at age 85. She was living in the Bala Nursing Home and had previously lived in Wynnefield, West Philadelphia and South Philadelphia. Her husband, Anthony Taffe, was a prominent dog trainer who was a consultant and trainer for police K-9 units in Philadelphia, Camden and other cities.

La Comunidad Hispana, the nonprofit health-care and legal-aid clinic in Kennett Square, wanted to reach out to Hispanics beyond Chester County. The Mexican Consulate in Philadelphia wanted to be known better to the folks served by La Comunidad, those beyond the city. "The consulate wanted to partner with us because we understand the population we serve, the same population they serve," La Comunidad president and CEO Margarita Queralt Mirkil said in an interview. So on Monday, a nurse from La Comunidad will begin the clinic's monthly presence at the consulate office in the Bourse Building on the east side of Independence Mall.