The Iowa Board of Nursing has now sanctioned a second nurse over the 2024 death of a Newton Correctional Facility inmate whose repeated warning signs — a week of fever, vomiting, and abdominal pain that ended with him vomiting blood — went unassessed by the nurses responsible for his care.
A week of symptoms, then a death in his cell
Malga Harun Yanga, an inmate at the Iowa Department of Corrections' Newton Correctional Facility, spent roughly a week in September 2024 reporting fever, nausea, vomiting, and severe abdominal pain, according to board records. At one point, colleagues told nurse Penny Lynn Daniels that Yanga had "vomited such a large amount of blood, it was all over his hands and the floor of his cell." The board found Daniels did not perform any additional assessment; she added electrolyte fluid to his medication order and told others he had a virus. Yanga was found unresponsive and seizing early on September 4, 2024, and was pronounced dead roughly 45 minutes after CPR began. The state's associate medical examiner ruled the cause of death complications of peritonitis from a perforated duodenal ulcer — a condition that, left untreated, is often treatable if caught early.
Two nurses, two sets of sanctions
The Iowa Board of Nursing charged both Daniels, of Newton, and a second nurse, David Arterburn, of Altoona, in October 2025, alleging both had committed an act that might adversely affect a patient's welfare and failed to assess or accurately document Yanga's condition. Daniels' case was resolved first: in June 2026, the board suspended her RN license for three months, ordered her to complete training on professional boundaries and ethics, and placed her on three years of monitored probation once the suspension ends.
Arterburn, who also saw Yanga in the days before his death, was sanctioned August 11, 2026. The board found he failed to assess or provide medical care despite being alerted to Yanga's declining condition, and that he did not document his calls about Yanga until after learning the inmate had died. His license was suspended for six months, followed by the same three-year probation and ethics-and-boundaries training the board imposed on Daniels.
I've worked correctional health, and I know exactly how this happens without anyone deciding to do harm. You're often the only clinical staff on a unit, security controls your access to the patient, and “he probably has a virus” is the kind of shorthand that gets repeated on a unit where everyone is stretched thin and nobody wants to be the one calling for an outside transfer over what might be nothing. That shorthand is exactly what a documented, escalating symptom picture — days of fever and vomiting ending in visible blood — is supposed to override. An incarcerated patient reporting pain doesn't get a lower standard of assessment because of where he's housed. Two license suspensions and a wrongful-death trial are what it costs when that standard slips.
A wrongful-death trial is next
Yanga's family has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit naming the Iowa Department of Corrections and its medical staff; a trial is scheduled for May 4, 2027. The defendants have denied wrongdoing in court filings. Both Daniels and Arterburn remain eligible to return to nursing practice once their suspensions and training requirements are complete, under the board's ongoing monitoring.