A wrongful death lawsuit filed against Sunnyview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center claims former employee Heather Pressdee was escorted off the premises the same day a 43-year-old man died from a lethal insulin injection.

This occurred five months after Pressdee, 41, was hired at the Butler Township facility and co-workers raised concerns about her conduct toward patients and their deaths while in her care, according to the suit.

Filed by Robert Peirce and Associates of Pittsburgh on Wednesday, March 27, on behalf of the family members of Nicholas Cymbol, 43, the suit claims Sunnyview administration “clearly failed to conduct an appropriate background check before hiring Pressdee” and “blatantly ignored their own abuse policy” in doing so.

The lawsuit is the fourth suit Robert Peirce and Associates have filed against the owners and operators of nursing facilities, which employed Pressdee.

“We were hired by the families of Heather Pressdee’s victims to get answers as to how she was permitted to continue working in these facilities, despite her erratic, disturbing and abusive behavior,” said Rob Peirce, managing partner of the firm, in a news release. “The more our office has investigated, the more questions we have as to why these facilities allowed these tragedies to occur.”

Law enforcement officials have linked Pressdee to the deaths of 17 nursing home patients at five facilities, including 10 patients at two Butler County facilities.

Charging documents filed in May of last year allege Pressdee would inject patients with lethal doses of insulin while she served in managerial positions at the nursing facilities.

The Wednesday suit states Pressdee was hired as unit manager of the cardinal unit at Sunnyview, where Cymbol resided in January 2023, five months before his death, and goes on to detail the alleged circumstances around Cymbol’s death and the deaths of five other patients at the facility.

Days before Cymbol’s death on May 1, 2023, Pressdee commented he “was going to be the next one to die,” the lawsuit states.

“The complaint alleged that Sunnyview administration failed to investigate Ms. Pressdee following a string of suspicious resident deaths in its facility in the months before Mr. Cymbol’s death,” the firm said in the news release.

The suit requests a full jury trial and contains claims of corporate negligence, wrongful death and vicarious liability.

Documents indicate Pressdee worked at 12 facilities across Butler, Allegheny, Westmoreland and Armstrong counties between October 2018 and May 2023. She is accused of killing or attempting to kill patients at five of the locations.

Between charges filed in May and November, Pressdee is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of criminal homicide, one count of criminal attempted homicide, 17 counts of attempted murder and 22 counts of neglect of a care-dependent person.

Pressdee is being held in the Butler County Prison without bail on criminal homicide charges.

According to the Wednesday lawsuit, Pressdee was forced to resign from 10 nursing facilities in less than four years due to “abusive tendencies and behavior toward residents and staff” before working at Sunnyview.

Before Cymbol’s death on May 1, the suit indicated Pressdee would repeatedly call him derogatory names, force him to sit apart from other residents and told staff members not to provide him food and water. Documents showed Pressdee also made false claims to Cymbol’s family that he was depressed.

The suit states Pressdee told another staff member Cymbol would be “the next one to die,” after five other patients had died during her tenure, but Sunnyview administration and staff “did nothing to separate her from or prevent her from harming” Cymbol.

Cymbol had a diabetic condition that required him to wear a device that measured his blood sugar, and his levels were to be checked six times a day, according to the suit.

On April 30, just 30 minutes into her shift at the facility, the suit states Pressdee injected Cymbol with 60 units of insulin, prompting his transfer to Butler Memorial Hospital.

He returned to Sunnyview later that evening, but by 4 a.m. May 1, Cymbol was found in hypoglycemic crisis and foaming at the mouth, according to the suit.

A family member was notified of Cymbol’s deteriorated condition, but did not make it to the facility before he died 30 minutes later.

According to the suit, staff failed to monitor Cymbol’s blood sugar throughout the rest of the night and claimed his blood sugar tracking device had undergone a “sensor error.”

At 6 a.m., the suit alleges, Pressdee showed up for work and hugged Cymbol’s family members, stating she was sorry for his death.

Pressdee was terminated from her position that day and escorted off the premises, the suit claims.

According to the suit, other staff members who provided information to the state Department of Health about the suspicious deaths were “terminated and/or reprimanded.”

Documents showed Pressdee later sent a sympathy card to Cymbol’s family reading, “(He) was one of a kind. He was an amazing sole (sic) with a great sense of humor. He will be missed. Words can’t not say how sorry I am.”

According to the lawsuit, Cymbol’s family attempted to obtain his complete medical records from Sunnyview several times.

After the sixth request, the suit states, an administrator contacted Cymbol’s family and advised they had mistakenly sent another individuals medical records instead of Cymbol’s, which is a violation of HIPAA rights.

When documents did arrive from Sunnyview, the suit claims, they were not the complete medical records requested.

The suit alleges Cymbol was Pressdee’s sixth victim at Sunnyview and that her misconduct toward patients began after only a few weeks on the job.

After being hired in early January, documents showed an 80-year-old diabetic woman in hospice died Jan. 21 under Pressdee’s care.

The suit claims that days before her death, the woman was found bloody, with broken teeth and two black eyes while under Pressdee’s care. Documents showed “defendants relied on Pressdee’s story that (the woman) ‘fell.’”

The nurse later admitted in interviews that she injected the woman with 60 units of short-acting insulin before her death, charging documents showed.

Pressdee was then accused of administering 60 units of short-acting insulin to a 104-year-old, non-diabetic woman, who died March 21.

Documents showed the 104-year-old was considered “in good health” before her death.

The suit indicates that despite the two mysterious deaths, Sunnyview continued to allow Pressdee to care for patients.

Before the end of March, a 78-year-old woman and 90-year-old man died under Pressdee’s care, the suit claims.

“Unbelievably, the staff and management at Sunnyview did nothing to investigate these very unusual occurrences in just a matter of days,” the suit read.

On April 17, an 82-year-old woman, a non-insulin dependent diabetic, died at the facility while in Pressdee’s care, the suit said.

Documents indicate Pressdee had previously stated the 82-year-old “needed to die.”

When staff members expressed concerns about Pressdee’s connection to the deaths, the suit claims a director at Sunnyview stated Pressdee “does her work.”

Earlier this month, Peirce and Associates filed two suits against Belair Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center of Lower Burrell on behalf of family members of the late Jack A. Rogers, 79, of Westmoreland County, and Norman P. Hendrickson, 88, of Beaver County.

Court documents showed Pressdee injected the men with 100 units of insulin even through the men were neither diabetic nor prescribed insulin.

Peirce and Associates also filed a suit against Belair on behalf of Scott and Gregory Hess, of Sarver, related to the September 2021 death of their mother, Marianne Bower, 68.

The suit claims the state attorney general’s Bureau of Narcotics Investigation and Drug Control determined Pressdee administered a lethal dose of insulin to Bower.

Sunnyview did not respond by the time of publication to a request for comment.