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On Thursday, July 23, attorney William Bennet held a press conference to redress critiques of his client, Superintendent Bennett Walsh, and poke holes in the state’s report on the Soldiers’ Home’s response to the pandemic.
As head of the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, Walsh has largely been blamed for the deadly fiasco, Gov. Charlie Baker put him on administrative leave and is seeking to fire Walsh from the job. Walsh will fight this in a court appearance on July 30, according to MassLive.
“This is about [Walsh’s] good name, his good character,” said Bennett during the press conference.
The state’s independent report on what transpired at the Soldiers’ Home accuses Bennett of hiding the severity of the situation from state higher-ups and not securing the items staff needed to properly battle the outbreak.
Walsh continues to assert that he never tried to hide the developing situation and that he had asked for the National Guards’ assistance and was denied.
Walsh is among the people named in a recently filed $176 million class-action lawsuit against Holyoke Soldiers’ Home leadership, holding them responsible for the deaths.
The Holyoke Soldiers’ Home suffered a major COVID-19 outbreak that started in March. Instead of adhering to best practices, Soldiers; Home management made copious errors that resulted in veteran deaths.
The investigation was particularly critical of how residents were moved within the facility - they were not spaced far enough apart to prevent the spread of infection.
However, Bennett said the investigators got this wrong, and veterans were mindfully placed in rooms according to patients’ rates of infection. There was plenty of space to prevent disease spread, he said.
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