Jeremiah Allen's death was a result of the criminal negligence of a licensed vocational nurse who inserted the wrong-size feeding tube into the comatose Fillmore man in 2004, a state prosecutor told jurors Thursday.

During closing arguments, Deputy Attorney General Natasha Fagen said Chad Josef Medlin, 63, and Sandra Monterroso, 51, are guilty of felony crimes involving reckless and negligent conduct. Fagen said the two acted with reckless disregard for human life against a person who relied on them for his care.

"A young man laying in a bed and his insides are dying. His body is reacting, and nobody is doing anything about it," Fagen told jurors.

Allen went into a coma when he was 19 after being injured in a 2003 surfing accident. He was being treated at the CareMeridian Oxnard post-acute care center when he died. Medlin is CareMeridian's nursing director and administrator, and Monterroso is a nurse there.

The state Attorney General's Office is prosecuting the case because it handles complaints from the state Department of Health Services.

Allen died from peritonitis at CareMeridian hours after a feeding tube larger than prescribed by his doctor was inserted into his body in the wrong place, causing a tear and the onslaught of the disease, according to court testimony.

Peritonitis causes inflammation of the abdominal cavity lining.

Defense lawyers told jurors that what happened to Allen was an unfortunate accident.

"To be criminally prosecuted for something like this is just terrible and shameful," said Monterroso's lawyer, Leonard Comden of Los Angeles.

Comden described his client as a caring, loving nurse dedicated to her profession for years. He said Monterroso's duties were to replace the tube, which had been out of the stomach for a short period of time. She was doing her job as she had done before, Comden said.

"Nothing told her the tube was in the wrong place," Comden told jurors. "It was in there fine. It just wasn't in the stomach. This was an accident, ladies and gentlemen."

Medlin's lawyer, Louis "Chuck" Samonsky, told jurors he doesn't blame the prosecutor for charging Medlin and Monterroso.

He said the case is in court because of an overzealous, state-paid doctor who read the medical report and concluded there was criminal conduct. Samonsky said his client properly supervised Monterroso.

Fagen told jurors Allen died an agonizing death, and witnesses who saw him just before death testified that he was sweating and pale and his eyes looked like they were "bulging out of his head."

Fagen said Monterroso ignored doctor's orders and made a false entry in her report that she saw Allen pull out his feeding tube, and that nobody at CareMeridian called an ambulance until hours after Allen had died.