Nurse arrested after police find her with patient’s medications

BEDFORD – A Medora woman is facing drug charges after Bedford Police officers went to CORE Nursing Home on 16th Street on Friday, May 12th to serve an arrest warrant at the request of the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department.

Lydia Gorbett

Officers were requested to arrest 54-year-old Lydia Gorbett on a warrant for a petition to revoke her probation.

When officers arrived they located Gorbett who is a nurse at the facility. She was reluctant to go with officers and she asked if she could finish her pill counts with the Director of Nursing, which officers allowed her to do. She then asked to go to the bathroom but she was told she would have to wait until she arrived at the jail.

She was then transported to the Bedford Police Department for processing. While there she asked again to go to the bathroom and again was told she would have to wait.

While at the jail, officers found a Hydrocodone pill in Gorbett’s pocket. She told police the pill was Tylenol.

Police then found several pills in Gorbett’s purse. When asked why she had the medication she told police “Because they were valuable.” She claimed someone had given her the Hydrocodone pill. She then stated that the night nurse at CORE sometimes does not give all of the patient’s medications and instead puts them in the top drawer of the medication cart and she had taken the medications. She then retracted that story. She then told police that CORE has a process to destroy medications not taken and she had not followed that policy, implying she had taken the medications instead of destroying them.

Police found the following drugs in Gorbett’s possession, Hydrocodone, Lorazepam, Methadone, and Adderall.

Gorbett was then arrested on five counts of possession of a controlled substance.