Royal Oak police: Fired hospital worker charged with returning to steal waste vials of fentanyl; homeless man accused of felony assault

Apr 01, 2023

A man fired from Corewell Health Beaumont Hospital is jailed on $50,000 bond after police say he returned to the hospital to steal discarded vials of leftover injectable fentanyl from a drug-and-needle waste container.

Security workers at the hospital on 13 Mile Road called police late May 18 when the ex-employee was discovered in a building.

Security got a tip that the man was going through a used drug and needle container and stealing leftover liquid fentanyl. The powerful and addictive narcotic is 100 times stronger than morphine and at the center of the deadly U.S. opioid drug epidemic.

Suspect Jermaine Morrison, 48, had 11 vials containing leftover amounts of the liquid drug, police said, and was carrying some hypodermic needles.

He was arraigned May 21 on charges of larceny in a building, and possession of less than 25 grams of the narcotic. Both charges are four-year felonies.

Morrison is due back in Royal Oak 44th District Court at 10 a.m. June 2.

A homeless man is accused of pulling a knife on another homeless man who refused to let the suspect use his cell phone, police said.

The incident was reported about 9:40 p.m. May 21.

Police said the suspect and the other man, who know each other, were sitting and talking on the steps of St. Mary Catholic Church on Lafayette Avenue near Sixth Street.

"The suspect and the victim had an argument over the victim's cell phone," said Royal Oak police Sgt. Timothy Brown. "The victim said the suspect appeared to be under the influence of something and pulled out a knife and pointed it at him. He thought he was going to be stabbed."

Police said the man with the cell phone used it to call police.

The suspect, Michael Wagner, 62, ran when he saw the police arrive, but was arrested about a block away near the Baker College campus building on Lafayette, Brown said.

Police recovered a folding knife they said the suspect threw in some bushes.

Wagner was arraigned in Royal Oak 44th District Court on a charge of felony assault, a four-year felony, and jailed on $25,000 cash bond. He's due back in court at 9 a.m. June 2.

A Warren woman who works at Corewell Health Beaumont Hospital, 3601 W. 13 Mile Road, told police Wednesday she discovered her expensive Cartier watch missing from her purse after she left work the day before.

The watch is reportedly worth about $28,000.

The woman, 34, told police she put her purse containing the watch in what she thought was a secure office near her work area.

Though she didn't notice the watch was gone until the next day, she told police she believes it was stolen at the hospital.

Police said there is no surveillance video in the area where the woman works and they have no information at this point on a possible suspect.

A woman who owns a 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee discovered it was stolen from in front of her house in the 4400 block of Sedgemoor Avenue shortly after midnight Thursday.

The unlocked vehicle had been parked in front of her house, and contained numerous commercial cleaning products, she told police.

Some of those cleaning products were found abandoned in Berkley next to where a Ford F-150 pickup truck was stolen during the same timeframe, police said.

-Mike McConnell, Tribune staff writer

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