By GLEN WERLING
A preliminary plea of not guilty has been entered in Wells Circuit Court for a rural Roanoke woman facing felony drug charges.
Miranda Rose Kahn, 34, has been charged with obstructing prescription drug delivery, a Level 5 felony; possession of a legend drug, a Level 6 felony; and theft, a Class A misdemeanor. Bond was continued at $16,500.
On Dec. 15, 2022, the Huntington County Sheriff’s Department responded to Kahn’s residence on Roanoke Road in Huntington County on a report of a domestic dispute. When deputies arrived, they interviewed both sides involved in the dispute — Kahn and her fiance — and discovered from the fiance that Kahn had become upset with him because she discovered he had photographed a prescription pill bottle that allegedly had been in her possession.
The bottle reportedly belonged to a former resident of the Markle Health & Rehabilitation facility where Kahn had been working as a nurse. The pills inside the bottle were reportedly gabepentin, a pain killer used often to treat diabetic neuropathy.
While speaking with the fiance, a Huntington County sheriff’s deputy located the pill bottle in question and reportedly observed that the pill count in the bottle he had found was visibly lower than the pill count in the bottle in the fiance’s photograph.
The Huntington County Sheriff’s Department then notified Detective Quentin Greer of the Wells County Sheriff’s Department since Markle Health & Rehabilitation is located on the Wells County side of Markle.
Greer was provided with the photo taken by the fiance and the photo taken by the Huntington County Sheriff’s deputy and observed that the pill level in the bottle in the two photos did appear lower in the later taken photo.
Greer interviewed Kahn at the Huntington County Jail Dec. 16. She reportedly acknowledged that her fiance had taken a photo of the pill bottle but denied taking any of the pills. She reportedly claimed he had taken a photo of the pill bottle to “get her in trouble.”
Kahn also acknowledged that she had been employed at the facility through an employment agency, but her connection to the facility had since been severed.
When the detective asked Kahn if she “had a drug problem,” Kahn reportedly replied that “she did not know.” She allegedly told Greer that she used marijuana.
Markle Health’s director of nursing informed Greer that the facility officials contacted the employment agency and told the agency employees they no longer wished to use Kahn’s services. The nursing director told Greer that officials at Markle Health & Rehabilitation suspected that Kahn was “stealing and/or lying about giving patients medication.”
Kahn was then suspended by the employment agency.
The patient who allegedly had the medication stolen was a patient at Markle for less than a month spanning from mid October to early November of 2022.
When Greer interviewed the patient and her son at another facility, the son recalled taking the medication to the facility at the request of his mother after the facility encountered “an ordering issue” when trying to provide the patient with her medication.
He reportedly handed the bag of his mothers’ medications to Kahn when he brought them to the facility.
glenw@news-banner.com
