No prison for a nursing home owner who sent 800 residents to ride out a hurricane in squalor

Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Louisiana businessman who sent more than 800 elderly residents from his seven nursing homes to ride out Hurricane Ida in a crowded, ill-equipped warehouse has pleaded no contest to 15 criminal counts. Bob Dean Jr. entered the plea Monday. He was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay more than $1.3 million in restitution and penalties. State Attorney General Liz Murrill said Dean deserved prison time. As Ida approached, Dean moved residents into a warehouse in the town of Independence, where authorities said they found ill and elderly people in squalid conditions. The state said seven of the evacuees died.