Lab Chief Faces Sentencing in Michigan 12 Years After Fatal US Meningitis Outbreak

HOWELL, Mich.—Days after a routine injection to ease back pain, Donna Kruzich and a friend drove across the border to Canada in 2012 to see end-of-summer theater in Stratford, Ontario. The 78-year-old Michigan woman suddenly became ill and returned home. By early October, she was dead. “Most of the time she could not communicate with us. She was basically in a coma,” son Michael Kruzich recalled. “We knew she had meningitis—but we didn’t know how she got it.” Evidence soon emerged: Donna Kruzich was one of at least 64 people in the United States who died because of tainted steroids made by a specialty pharmacy in Massachusetts. Nearly 12 years later, the operator of New England Compounding Center is returning to a Michigan court Thursday for his sentence for involuntary manslaughter....