Kailua dentist charged in child’s death turns herself in
COURTESY ASHLEY BOYLE / NOV. 2013
Ashley Boyle with her 3 1/2-year-old daughter Finley Puleo Boyle at Malaekahana Beach, Laie in November 2013 before Finley suffered massive brain damage after an overdose of sedatives while at the dentist in December 2013.
COURTESY HONOLULU POLICE DEPARTMENT
Lilly Geyer was charged with manslaughter in connection with the death of a 3-year-old.
A Kailua dentist charged with manslaughter in connection with the death of a 3-year-old patient turned herself in today.
State sheriff deputies released Dr. Lilly Geyer after she posted $100,000 bail. Geyer is scheduled to be arraigned in state court next week. Manslaughter is a Class A felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
An Oahu grand jury returned an indictment on Sept. 8 charging Geyer with manslaughter in two ways. One for recklessly causing the January 2014 death of Finley Boyle. The second was for recklessly failing to get medical help for the toddler after she stopped breathing and went into cardiac arrest.
Boyle’s mother took her daughter to Geyer’s Island Dentistry for Children in Kailua in December 2013 for root canal work. The girl stopped breathing and suffered a heart attack after being administered a cocktail of pain relievers and sedatives. She slipped into a coma and died a month later.
Geyer is also charged with assault for recklessly causing serious bodily injury to the girl.
The indictment charges Geyer with another assault, one involving a 2-year-old girl who just two weeks before Boyle’s appointment had a baby root canal performed by Geyer. The state says the 2-year-old was unconscious for 12 hours from the drugs given to her to sedate her.
Don't miss out on what's happening!
Stay in touch with top news, as it happens, conveniently in your email inbox. It's FREE!
17 responses to “Kailua dentist charged in child’s death turns herself in”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
First of all…Ive never heard of root canals performed on children so young. Anyways, from what I understand, this doctor performed unnecessary procedures out of greed. I hope this is brought out in court. Also, how was this doctor able to get hold of these strong sedatives if she didn’t have the necessary qualifications to administer it? Lastly, how can her staff turn a blind eye to all of these things. They have the responsibility to report such acts. I think the staff should be on trial too.
Turns out root canals can be done on young children.
Ref: http://www.deardoctor.com/articles/root-canal-treatment-for-children/
Sad to say this quack didn’t have a clue to do it professionally. Where did she get her license?
university of saigon
Ho Chi Min?
If it was not for the efforts of Sen Roz Baker, this dentist would never have been licensed in Hawaii. Baker created a loophole for Geyer to get her license in 2005.
See: http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2005/05/23/story1.html
We’ll never know what would have happened if Baker had not passed this bill, but what we do know is this:
1. We know that Senator Roz Baker was approached by Dr. Geyer (then known as Lily Tsou) to lower the licensing standards and help her get a dental license.
2. We know that Baker introduced a bill in 2006 to make this happen.
3. We know that the Hawaii Dental Association and the Hawaii Dental Board itself argued against Baker’s plan, warning of risks to patient safety if the dentist licensing standards were lowered.
4. We know that Baker dismissed these safety concerns as without merit, and accused these people of being selfish.
5. We know that Dr. Geyer got her license withing weeks of the bill being pushed through by Baker.
6. We know that another dentist who had been unable to get a dental license, Dr. John Stover also got a license two months right after the bill passed.
7. We know that in the coming years, patients of both Dr. Stover and Geyer would be harmed by their incompetence, including deaths, being left comatose and near deaths.
8. We know that families of these victims have had their lives devastated by what happened.
9. We know that Dr. Geyer’s dental assistant has had her life devastated by what happened.
10. We know that Dr. Geyer and Stover’s lives have been devastated by what happened.
11. We know that it would have been better for all concerned if these dentists had never obtained their licenses to practice dentistry in Hawaii.
12. We know that these tragedies are costing taxpayers in the form of RICO-DCCA investigations, criminal investigation and prosecution, and likley incarceration or probation costs.
13. We know that Senator Baker had never apologized for contributing to what happened and has had no accountability whatsoever.
14. We know that Senator Baker has been repeatedly accused of bullying members of the public before her committees.
15. We know that Baker was accused of using her power to retaliate against the head of the DOH’s Dental Branch when he investigated and filed an insurance fraud complaint against a Maui dentist who was a supporter of Baker.
16. We know that in 2014, Baker’s defense attorney argued before the court, “Now, the fact that Senator Baker had a personal vendetta because her intent was to retaliate against the Plaintiff for the alleged whistle blowing, that is irrelevant. In terms of the motive it’s irrelevant. Your Honor, it could be discriminatory, it could be because Senator Baker does not like the person for — because he’s gay, lesbian, black, white, whatever the reason is. It doesn’t matter. Your Honor, because … it’s not the Court to make that decision, it is for the legislators. Under Article III in this case, Section 12, they have the power to punish their own members for any misconduct. It’s not before the Court, that’s why you see — hardly see any senators being brought to court in this case, in any court.”
17. We know that in 2014, Baker introduced a bill to reduce the number of dentists on the state dental board and replace them with hygienists, and that dentists expressed fear Baker’s proposal would further weaken oversight of the profession when more scrutiny is needed.
So, in fact, we know quite a bit about Roz Baker’s impact on the health and protection of dental patients, and none of it looks good to me. Nevertheless, you are correct, we will never know whether or not the health and safety of the patients of Drs. Geyer and Stover would have been better protected if Baker hadn’t ignored the concerns of the Dental Board and hadn’t lowered licensing standards in 2006.
Wow… Book’em Danno!
guilty…
Once anyone sits in the dentists chair, little children and adults, the dentists owns you. They can pull lots of teeth if they want to with no recourse. The movie “the dentists” is for real. Evil dentists disguised as being good are the devil’s own people.
Root canal for a three year old ? perhaps there is allot more than meets the eye. After her entire practice has been investigated, I would suspect
that we will hear of other criminal acts performed. Strong sedatives should never be given to a three year old unless it is a life and death situation. More to come !!
I didn’t know young kids had root canals. I thought baby teeth just fall out. How can she give all these drugs to children.
she was so grossly incompetent, how did she get through medical school?
This woman deserves many years in jail and it has to be made sure that afterwards she can never ever practice dentistry anywhere on the planet.
She didn’t. She was kicked out of medical school and became a dentist.
G-U-I-L-T-Y !!!
Well all the greedy money she made is now being used to fund her defense and hiring her attorney Michael Green. How ironic it that?
What is wrong with this lady thinking that she can administer drugs properly to sedate young children.
greed makes people do evil things