A Warroad woman who was director of nursing at Warroad Senior Living Center took a resident’s morphine from a medication cart and handed the bottle back overfilled with a lighter-colored liquid and her blood on the label, according to a criminal complaint.
Shelley Lynn Fransway, who was 52 at the time of the alleged offense, is charged in Roseau County District Court with felony theft of a controlled substance and felony financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult. The complaint was filed Oct. 28. It says the theft happened Aug. 6, 2025.
That day, two nurses checking a medication cart in the center’s A-wing found the morphine missing from its lock box with no log entry showing it had been removed, the complaint says. Policy required the director of nursing to be told of any medication problem. One nurse went looking for Fransway and found her in the ambulance bay entrance between the A-wing and the B-wing.
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Fransway said the morphine was in her pocket and that she needed to clean blood off her finger before giving it back, according to the complaint. When she handed over the bottle, the nurse noticed the liquid was an odd color and dripping down the sides.
Staff measured 40 milliliters of fluid in a bottle that should have held 30, the complaint says. The morphine was a lighter blue than its normal dark blue. The seal had been removed and a stopper too small for the bottle was inside. Fransway admitted the blood on the label was hers from a cut on her finger. An employee said the bottle had been properly sealed at the 11 p.m. check the night before.
A coworker told police Fransway had taken the morphine out of the cart with her own keys and said she was doing an audit, according to the complaint. The coworker said audits are normally done by two people and medications are never taken out of the unit. Fransway had carried the bottle to the B-wing medication room, where the only stoppers like the one found in the bottle are kept.
The next day, staff found the bottle’s missing seal in that room along with what appeared to be spilled blue morphine on the counter and floor, the complaint says. They also found an empty needle package with blood on it. When an employee brought up drug testing, Fransway said they were not at that point yet. She also did not want to contact the administrator or law enforcement.
A Minnesota Department of Health investigation concluded that financial exploitation was substantiated, according to the complaint. In a written statement to investigators, Fransway raised other possibilities for how the bottle was tampered with.
