The owners of a New Orleans-area nursing home where 35 people drowned in one of the worst tragedies of Hurricane Katrina pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to multiple charges of negligent homicide and cruelty to the infirm.

Salvador and Mabel Mangano are accused of not taking action to save the elderly bed-ridden residents of their St. Rita's Nursing Home in suburban St. Bernard's Parish.

The victims died when the one-story building flooded to the ceiling in 20 minutes after protective levees were swamped by the Aug. 29, 2005, storm.

The Manganos were indicted last month on 35 counts of negligent homicide and 64 counts of cruelty to the infirm and are out on bail. No date has been set for their trial, but a hearing on legal motions will be held on Dec. 7.

They made their not-guilty plea in a brief arraignment before Judge Jerome Winsberg at the St. Bernard's Parish courthouse, which itself was flooded by Katrina.

The Manganos said nothing as they left the courthouse, surrounded by a phalanx of local police officers.

Silver-haired Mabel, 63, and husband Salvador, 65, both casually dressed, looked like a pair of grandparents as they walked silently to their car.

Their attorney, James Cobb, in a brief statement said the Manganos were being "pursued" by the Louisiana Attorney General's office "without factual support."

"We have entered today a plea of not guilty to all charges. We have entered this plea because Sal and Mabel Mangano are completely innocent," he said.

Cobb previously has said the Manganos did not evacuate the elderly victims because they believed they were so frail that a move could kill them. They thought their plan of keeping them in place with food, water and generators was the better way.

The Manganos have blamed the federal and local governments for not protecting people from the storm.

But prosecutors say the Manganos ignored mandatory evacuation orders and refused offers of help to move their residents to safety the day before the storm, which killed more than 1,500 people along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Rescuers managed to save 29 people from St. Rita's, floating them out on mattresses through the windows.

Linda Stogner, whose 86-year-old mother Helen Montalbano died at St. Rita's, was indignant after the hearing.

"How can they say they are not guilty?" she asked. "They didn't care about the people they left in there."

Stogner said her brother called the nursing home before Katrina hit and was assured his mother would be fine.

"Don't worry about it, go ahead and go, she'll be taken care of," Stogner said he was told. "She wasn't taken care of, so they lied." 

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