A Lee County, Florida, judge sentenced former licensed practical nurse Sharlene Pflugrad, 65, to 30 months in state prison on Sept. 22, 2026, after she pleaded no contest to felony child neglect in a case built almost entirely on overnight surveillance footage. Investigators say the video showed Pflugrad muting a medically fragile 3-year-old’s oxygen alarm roughly 100 times over a single overnight shift instead of giving him supplemental oxygen or calling for help.
An agency hired her for the overnight shift
Pflugrad was placed in the home through a home health agency to care for the boy overnight, from 10 p.m. to 8:15 a.m., at his family’s Cape Coral home. Born extremely premature, the child has chronic lung disease and requires continuous pulse-oximeter monitoring while he sleeps. His physician-approved care plan was specific: administer supplemental oxygen, notify his parents, notify the agency, and call 911 if necessary, any time his oxygen saturation fell below 88%.
What the surveillance video showed
Investigators who reviewed 147 clips from a camera in the boy’s room say Pflugrad spent the night of Sept. 15, 2025, silencing the monitor’s alarms rather than responding to them. At one point his oxygen saturation dropped to 79%, court records show — well below the threshold that was supposed to trigger oxygen, a call to his parents and a call to 911. Police say Pflugrad can be heard on the recording telling the monitor to “shut up,” and that she swapped out sensors and briefly performed chest cupping rather than administer oxygen or notify anyone. She never called 911 that night, and never told the agency or the boy’s parents what had happened until they reviewed the footage themselves.
The boy’s mother later testified that the night left lasting damage. “This has caused significant harm to his lungs,” she told the court, according to reporting on the sentencing.
A rejected plea deal, then a no-contest plea
Lee Circuit Judge Bruce Kyle had rejected an earlier proposed plea agreement in the case — an unusual move that signaled the court did not see it as adequate given what the video showed. Pflugrad ultimately pleaded no contest to one felony count of child neglect in July 2026. At her sentencing hearing, she denied wrongdoing, telling the judge she had “done as I was told” during the shift, a statement Judge Kyle did not credit when he imposed the sentence.
Along with the 30-month prison term, Kyle ordered 30 months of probation to follow, 100 hours of community service, and the forfeiture of Pflugrad’s nursing license. She will not be eligible to hold a nursing license in Florida again.
Why this should worry every home health nurse
Overnight, one-on-one home health shifts run almost entirely on trust: there is no charge nurse down the hall and no rapid-response team one floor up if a nurse decides an alarm is an inconvenience rather than a warning. Pflugrad’s care plan gave her a specific, written trigger — 88% saturation — and a specific, written list of who to call. Prosecutors say the video shows her choosing not to use either, for hours, while the numbers on the monitor kept dropping. That distinction is what turned a licensing complaint into a criminal case, and it is why this sentence includes something a state Board of Nursing complaint alone typically cannot guarantee: she can no longer hold the license the job required in the first place.
Court reporting on the case has not named the home health agency that placed Pflugrad in the home, and it is not clear whether the agency itself faces any state licensing scrutiny over the placement. Florida’s home health agencies are separately licensed by the state Agency for Health Care Administration, distinct from the individual nursing license the Board of Nursing has now taken from Pflugrad.