Ex-nurse gets 10 years for fatal heroin injection

COEUR d’ALENE — A former nurse who injected his girlfriend with a lethal dose of heroin was sentenced Monday to 10 years behind bars.

Thirty-year-old Ryan Forbes’s sentence will run concurrently with two other sentences for a burglary conviction and a drug conviction in First District Court.

Judge Lansing Haynes said Forbes, who as an RN was fired from Benewah Community Hospital for stealing medical supplies to supplement his drug addiction, had been responsible for 19-year-old Cathryn Mason on the night four years ago that she died in his bed.

As a nurse, Forbes should have kept Mason from drugs instead of helping her abuse them, Haynes said.

“You chose to be reckless with the life and health of Miss Mason,” Haynes said. “You had a duty to her, to help her.”

Haynes heeded the recommendation of Kootenai County deputy prosecutor Stanley Mortensen, who asked the court for a five-year fixed prison sentence and five years to be used at the discretion of the Department of Correction.

Forbes, who has a young child and who has been in jail for more than a year for probation violations and adjudication of Monday’s manslaughter case, told the court he has matured over the past four years. He said he would never do drugs again once he receives the help he needs to lick his addiction.

Haynes didn’t buy it, however, pointing out that Forbes had already been given numerous chances to beat his drug habit.

“Rehabilitation has been extensively attempted for you, to no apparent effect,” Haynes said.

Forbes was charged last year in Mason’s death after serving a prison rider for burglary and drugs associated with Mason’s case.

Mason, a local high school graduate and college student, was found dead in May 2014 in the bedroom of a Post Falls home Forbes shared with his parents. Forbes was arrested after Mason’s death for possession of a controlled substance, but he was not charged with killing his girlfriend until last year.

Haynes said the case was unusual because an RN tasked with helping people stay off drugs was the one who injected the heroin — even if it was at the behest of Mason — that killed the 19-year-old.