Medford police have arrested a former nurse at a Medford hospital who is at the center of a sprawling drug-diversion case that involved alleged harm to dozens of patients.

Dani Marie Schofield, 36, faces 44 felony counts of second-degree assault , according to a news release from the Medford Police Department.

Court documents show Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Laura Cromwell set bail at $4.4 million.

Schofield’s arrest is a major development in an investigation that began in December 2023 when Asante officials reached out to the police department.

Medford police handed the results of the seven-month investigation over to the Jackson County District Attorney’s Office in late April. Chief Deputy DA Patrick Green called it the “biggest case” ever handled by the DA’s office.

The release on Thursday said Asante was alerted to the situation with Schofield after the hospital became “concerned with a rising number of central line infection cases in patients while in their care.” After the hospital conducted an internal investigation, which included consultation with outside medical experts, “Asante provided MPD with information that all of the identified cases were isolated to patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and occurred within a specific date range,” the release said.

While neither Asante officials nor Medford police had publicly named Schofield before Thursday, Schofield, who lives in Medford, was first identified in a civil suit filed Feb. 26 by Idiart Law Group in Central Point on behalf of the estate of 65-year-old Horace “Buddy” Wilson.

Wilson died Feb. 25, 2022, the suit alleges, after Schofield repeatedly swapped prescribed fentanyl with nonsterile tap water administered through Wilson’s bloodstream via his central line, according to court documents.

Schofield’s nursing license was suspended in November and expired in April. Before the law firm filed its case, the Rogue Valley Times interviewed several families who said they were contacted by Asante officials in December and were told that their loved ones became ill, or died, after a hospital nurse replaced patients’ pain medication with tap water.

The interviews establish a timeline of infections occurring between November 2022 and July 2023, though Idiart and Medford attorney David deVilleneuve both said they have reviewed infections that occurred even earlier. Medford police were set to hold a press conference at 3:30 p.m. Thursday.

According to court documents, Schofield is believed to have committed the alleged assaults for which she as been charged between July 25, 2022, and July 25, 2023.

The charges do not include any allegations of homicide, but at least eight of those listed on the indictment are dead, according to civil lawyers representing the estates of some of Schofield’s former patients, The Oregonian reported. Police did not respond to questions about the total number of Schofield’s alleged victims who died.

Police and the Jackson County District Attorney’s Office said in joint news releases that they didn’t pursue murder, manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide charges after reviewing hospital records and pathology reports, and speaking to medical experts. Police said it became clear that the “questionable deaths associated with this case could not be directly attributed to the infections.”

In other words, patients alleged to have died under Schofield’s care were already medically fragile and at risk of dying when they were hospitalized.