North Carolina hospital fires nurse accused of cuffing boy to porch

A North Carolina man accused of handcuffing a boy to a porch with a dead chicken around his neck has been axed from his hospital job, a hospital spokesman said. Emergency room nurse Dorian Harper, 57, of Monroe no longer works at Carolinas Medial Center-Union, Kevin McCarthy, a spokesman for Carolinas HealthCare System, which owns the Monroe hospital, told The Charlotte Observer Tuesday. Harper was arrested Nov. 7 after a Union County sheriff's deputy found an 11-year-old bound and lightly clothed in frigid temperatures at a farmhouse owned by Harper and Wanda Lawson, a former child-abuse investigative supervisor for the county Department of Social Services. Lawson, who was not at the house at the time of the incident, was fired last week, the newspaper said. The department accused her of violating her public duties to protect children. Five children, ages 7-14, were removed from the home by authorities. Four of the children had been adopted by Lawson, and she and Harper were the 11-year-old's legal guardians.