A Kailua dentist charged with manslaughter in connection with the death of a 3-year-old patient turned herself in Monday.
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 was 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.
The state attorney general had previously charged Nicole Dudoit, one of Geyer’s former dental assistants, with assault in the same incident for administering the drugs to the 2-year-old, thereby recklessly causing the girl serious bodily injury.
A state judge ruled in July that the state failed to allege any injury suffered by the girl and dismissed the charge. Dudoit, 29, pleaded no contest to two counts of dispensing the drugs without a written prescription and faces a maximum five-year prison term for each count at sentencing in November.
Her lawyer said Dudoit will ask the judge for an opportunity to avoid conviction by deferring her no contest pleas instead of finding her guilty.
The indictment against Geyer also charges her with 26 counts of distributing, administering, prescribing or dispensing controlled substances after her state license had expired and six counts of medical assistance fraud for allegedly making false claims in applications for compensation.
Geyer shut down her practice following the Boyle incident and is no longer licensed to practice dentistry or to prescribe and dispense drugs in Hawaii.
Boyle’s parents sued Geyer in December 2013 and agreed to a confidential, out-of-court settlement with her six months later.