Ex-police officer's wife accused of trying to kill him by injecting fecal matter into his hospital IV | Lexington Herald Leader

The wife of a former Lexington police officer has been accused of trying to kill him by injecting fecal matter into his hospital IV.

Rosemary Vogel, 65, was arrested in Chandler, Ariz., on a charge of attempted murder of Phil Vogel, 66.

Phil Vogel was a Lexington police officer for 22 years, until the fatal shooting of a teenager that exposed a racial rift in Lexington and sparked a series of community discussions about relations between blacks and whites.

On Thursday, Phil Vogel was in a recovery room after having heart surgery at Chandler Regional Medical Center, in a suburb of Phoenix, when his "intravenous pump alarm went off, indicating some type of flow problem," according to Arizona police documents.

A nurse who came into the room to check on the problem told police that Rosemary Vogel was touching the pump and the IV line and that Vogel told the nurse "the line just needed a flush."

The nurse said the line was "filled with an unknown brownish substance," and when she removed the line she "smelled an odor that reminded the R.N. of fecal matter."

She told police she capped the line and left the room to get help. When she came back within seconds, Rosemary Vogel, a registered nurse who once worked at the hospital, was emptying the brownish fluid into the trash.

The hospital tested the fluid and found it to be "fecal matter."

Police said they found a zip-top bag in Vogel's purse that contained three syringes. Two contained a clear liquid, and the third, on which the plunger had been compressed, contained "a brown substance where the needle meets the syringe container."

Police said Phil Vogel "is expected to survive but remains in the hospital recovering from the surgical procedure and the attempt on his life."

Police said they did not know why Rosemary Vogel would have injected the fluid into the IV.

She is being held on $100,000 bond in the Maricopa County jail. She is charged with first-degree premeditated attempted murder and abuse of a vulnerable adult.

Jail officials said she declined to be interviewed.

Rosemary Vogel is a native of Kentucky who lives in Sun Lakes, Ariz., according to police records.

In October 1994, Phil Vogel and other officers were trying to arrest Tony Sullivan, 18, on three felony warrants when Vogel shot Sullivan in the head. Vogel told investigators he was manually decocking his gun when it accidentally discharged, hitting and killing Sullivan.

Vogel, a sergeant, retired in 1995 after a grand jury decided not to indict him in the shooting.

After his retirement, Vogel pursued a master's degree in criminal justice education at Eastern Kentucky University.

He said in 1995 that he planned to move to Arizona, where his parents lived, and seek a college-level teaching job.