A New Orleans family medicine physician has pleaded guilty to helping his sister slip out of a court-ordered ankle monitor days before she was set to stand trial for manslaughter, ending a case that included two failed hospital escape attempts, a soldering iron, and an arrest that took federal marshals into a rural North Louisiana emergency room. Dr. Kerry Sterling, 50, withdrew his not guilty plea and admitted to being an accessory after the fact to manslaughter, according to court records.
Sterling's sister, 39-year-old Kyana Traylor, had been charged with manslaughter in the death of George Singleton, the 32-year-old mentally disabled brother of her boyfriend, and was originally scheduled to stand trial on March 17, 2025, according to NOLA.com. Investigators say Traylor kept Singleton in squalid conditions at her Terrytown home, and prosecutors alleged she withheld food and care from him over an extended period, according to WWL-TV. An autopsy found Singleton had lost 44 pounds over four months and showed signs of acute starvation and chronic malnutrition before he ultimately bled to death over 12 hours from a severed femoral artery in his thigh.
A Bond, a Bracelet, and a Bogus MRI
According to authorities, Sterling helped Traylor make bail about a week before her trial was set to begin. Traylor, who had taken out a $250,000 insurance policy on Singleton and was separately charged with insurance fraud, was also facing charges for alleged abuses against Singleton's disabled mother. Within minutes of posting the $650,000 bond, Traylor allegedly began making harassing phone calls to Singleton's paralyzed 61-year-old mother at her nursing home, prompting prosecutors to seek a court-ordered exclusion zone around the facility, the station's report noted.
Once released, Traylor checked herself into a New Orleans hospital complaining of stroke-like symptoms. Employees with the Assured Supervision Accountability Program, the agency that owned her GPS ankle monitor, went to the hospital to remove the device so she could undergo an MRI. Per the same account, an ASAP employee spoke with a person wearing scrubs in Traylor's hospital room on March 10, 2025, at University Medical Center. Matt Dennis, who is associated with ASAP, believes that person was Sterling posing as his sister's doctor. An ASAP employee later found Traylor simply waiting for a ride in the hospital lobby instead of receiving an MRI, according to Dennis, and the monitor was reattached.
Soldering Iron Cuts Short a Second Escape
The following day, a bail bond agent tracked Traylor's ankle bracelet to a street in New Orleans' Bywater neighborhood, near Dauphine Street and Poland Avenue in the Ninth Ward. There, according to Dennis, Sterling used a soldering iron to cut off his sister's ankle monitor. ASAP provided a photo of the partially severed cuff, and both tampering attempts triggered automated alerts with the monitoring agency, per WWL-TV's earlier reporting on the timeline. Traylor was arrested immediately after Sterling was spotted cutting off her monitor, while Sterling fled the scene.
Sterling was taken into custody three days later while working at Madison Parish Hospital in Tallulah, in rural North Louisiana. Federal marshals and local deputies arrived to execute his arrest warrant while he was actively working a shift as an emergency room doctor, according to the Madison Journal. In an unusual twist, hospital interim CEO Dr. Satira Perry and Director of Nursing Susie Gaines were themselves arrested on misdemeanor resisting-an-officer charges after allegedly interfering with deputies during Sterling's apprehension, the Madison Journal reported.
Broader Scrutiny Followed the Case
Sterling's legal troubles didn't end with the ankle monitor case. In May 2025, the New Orleans Police Department publicly named him a person of interest in the fatal crossfire shooting of 9-year-old Lee'Lani Brooks in Algiers, according to WWL-TV's coverage of that investigation. And just weeks before entering his guilty plea, the Louisiana Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal denied a supervisory writ application Sterling had filed seeking to quash the charge against him on venue and procedural grounds, per court records cited by Justia Law.
Traylor's own path through the courts took a separate turn. A Jefferson Parish court ruled on August 7 that she was not mentally competent to proceed, according to court records, and she will be transported to Eastern Louisiana Mental Health Hospital for treatment. Traylor was scheduled to stand trial Monday in Jefferson Parish before that competency ruling intervened.
What the Plea Deal Means Going Forward
Judge E. Adrian Adams deferred a five-year prison sentence for Sterling and instead ordered him to serve three years of active probation along with 100 hours of community service, court records show. Sterling entered his plea under Article 893 of the Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure, which allows a first-time noncapital felony offender to have sentencing deferred; if probation is completed successfully, the conviction is set aside with the same legal effect as an acquittal for expungement purposes, according to legal analysis from Gilmer & Giglio.
That deal does not necessarily settle Sterling's future as a physician. Under Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 44, Section 9, an expungement following an Article 893 sentence removes a conviction from general public view but explicitly preserves access for state regulatory bodies, including the Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, according to guidance published by the Avoyelles Parish District Attorney's Office. Public physician registries already show Sterling's Louisiana medical license expired in 2025 following his felony indictment, per records from the NPPES NPI Registry and WebMD, and legal analysts have noted the felony tampering charge put his professional license in immediate jeopardy. Sterling earned his medical degree from Louisiana State University School of Medicine in 2006 and had operated Sterling Family Medicine Clinic in New Orleans.
The case also lands amid wider regional scrutiny of how ankle monitor tampering alerts are handled. Hoodline reported in July on operational instability and vendor conflicts within Greater New Orleans' electronic monitoring infrastructure, which prompted state lawmakers to form an oversight task force examining tamper alert response protocols and provider responsibilities.
