DARLINGTON — A nurse is charged with stealing hundreds of opioid prescription pills from Lafayette Manor, according to records filed in Lafayette County Circuit Court.

Lindsey L. Wendling, 28, Manchester, Iowa, faces 12 Class H felony counts of theft. Her initial appearance is June 3.

According to the criminal complaint, filed May 6:

Wendling was employed at Lafayette Manor, the county-owned skilled nursing facility at 719 E. Catherine St., when her logs of patient prescriptions started to raise suspicions within the past year. The facility reported the discrepancies to police in February.

An investigation found that Wendling “checked out” pain management medications like oxycodone, hydrocodone, morphine sulfate and codeine, but failed to document whether she gave them to residents.

The medications were not part of her patients’ daily medicine routine, and only when Wendling was on duty were medications checked out to those patients.

Other nurses told police they had suspected for a while that Wendling was diverting pills for her own use. Wendling had a lung-transplant surgery in recent years and mentioned to a coworker that her doctor stopped prescribing her pain medication in October 2018.

Of 441 medication check-outs conducted by Wendling and examined during the investigation, nearly two-thirds, or 296, “were unaccounted for,” police found.

“All the meds were Schedule II Opioids, which are highly addictive pain control meds vulnerable to abuse,” an officer wrote in a report included with the criminal complaint.

When police interviewed Wendling, she said she didn’t understand why she was suspected of drug diversion. When presented with evidence of log-keeping discrepancies, she stopped the interview for 42 minutes to consult with her husband because she “wanted his input” before she said anything that “might get her in trouble,” an officer noted.

She did not confess to nor deny the allegations during the interview, the officer reported.