Virginia Patient Found Guilty of Assaulting Paramedic

[News]

Chad Willie, 34, was found guilty of felony assault and battery of a firefighter for an incident that occurred Feb. 29.

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[DwayneEMTP]

A perfect example of a situation that I constantly complain about.

Fire decided that they wanted to take him, and that's that. I'm not sure of her level of education as she's once described as a paramedic and another time as an EMT. But they had no right to have their hands on this man. His wife is a nurse and says that he didn't have a seizure, not that it matters, and claims that he didn't consent.

It sounds to me like they had to show up twice and decided that he was coming with them whether he wanted to or not so that they wouldn't have to answer another call from him.

Instead of them all being fired, and possibly charged with crimes (As the article makes it sound should have occurred) they instead are rewarded with this man being charged with a felony.

It's a dark day for EMS when Firemen they can't even be trusted to make such simple decisions as to whether or not a patient consented, or solve such simple problems as dealing with an altered patient non MMA style, and yet the court will call them victims.

Good on you boys and girls for beating up on an altered patient, getting punched in the head, as you should have been, and then crying about. Makes me want to spit...

[BillKaneEMT]

I truly hope that the author of this story was drunk and got it all backwards or something. How in the hell was that verdict possible? Touching a competent patient without consent is battery. Period. If the patient was NOT competent then how the fu#$ was it assault and battery on his part? This ruling is insane, the prosecuting attorney and judge need to lose their jobs and be evicted from their homes and savaged by badgers. FFS. Unacceptable.

edit:

Instead of them all being fired, and possibly charged with crimes (As the article makes it sound should have occurred) they instead are rewarded with this man being charged with a felony.

It's a dark day for EMS when Firemen they can't even be trusted to make such simple decisions as to whether or not a patient consented, or solve such simple problems as dealing with an altered patient non MMA style, and yet the court will call them victims.

At MINIMUM they need their certs revoked. If anyone from any pure ambulance service I've ever heard of tried this they would damn well lose their certs. Victims, what a joke. I have plenty of friends in local FD's and I can't conceive of any of them pulling something like this. This is just ridiculous.

2nd edit: And I mean permanently revoked. All of em. None of this suspension crap. That basic on the ALS rig near me who started an IV got his revoked permanently. I'm not gonna paint all FF's with the same brush but that department needs to clean house.

Edited July 17, 2012 by BillKaneEMT

[DwayneEMTP]

...How in the hell was that verdict possible? Touching a competent patient without consent is battery. Period. If the patient was NOT competent then how the fu#$ was it assault and battery on his part?...

Yeah, that is where you and I are in complete agreement. This makes me just batshit crazy...And FELONY assault and battery! This guys life was changed forever because he called EMS, or they were called for him. And that's not really our job, right? To make people afraid to call us?

I'm sure that the hosemonkeys are very happy that this has sent a message to "respect us or else!" But it also sends the message that EMS is to be feared...and I hate that really bad.

Don't believe me? Go to that other website and look at the responses to the same story. 100% "Yay! I wish it was a felony here!!" Not a single post about personal responsibility...

[paramedicmike]

There is always more to the story than what is printed.

[Asysin2leads]

I nearly had my arm broken by a guy on PCP. I didn't file charges, because he was on PCP. This reminds me of a patient I had way back in the dark days when I first started working, doing an inter facility transport for a 16 year old with seizures. They called 911, the police responded first. When they arrived, he was post-ictal and kicked one of them. You could say the officers used more force than necessary in restraining him. You could also say they beat the living shit of him. If you can't manage an AMS patient, find another job.

[BillKaneEMT]

There is always more to the story than what is printed.

I truly hope so Mike. I get that nobody enjoys being knocked around by a patient. I got punched in the eye a couple days ago by an older guy we were packaging for a psych eval due to AMS/thoughts of suicide. It was irritating and he didn't even have a good punch (sharp knuckles though:P) so I can understand being upset about getting hit. I didn't try to have him thrown in jail though. Thing is, if the patient is not competent to give consent and you take him against his will then, being incompetent to refuse treatment he is, in my mind, not responsible for his actions. You can't have it both ways.

Let's say I'm dispatched to a call for a 40 year old male having a syncopal episode on his front porch. I arrive just after the patients wife, a nurse, gets home from work. The RN explains that her husband fainted due to overwork and he's fine. I witness him faint again (I think) and decide he needs to go to the hospital. I laugh in a chilling manner and strut past the silly nurse, grabbing the awakening husband and telling him he's going to the ER. He says no and begins to struggle so I choke him out, strap him to a cot, and kidnap him. It's ok though because he's so messed up in the head he can't legally refuse treatment. Then I insist he be placed under arrest for willfully hitting me in the face. That's beyond insane. That's: "I just looked upon the tentacled face of Cthulhu" insane.

Even granting that part of this story was mistyped or just misunderstood by the author I can't consider this anything but a miscarriage of justice. It'll go to appeal and I hope it gets overturned. That's something new for me, I'm almost always coming down for harsher penalties for breaking the law, but in this case I simply feel the medic/emt's were in the wrong. Assuming that the patient actually consented to treatment, then never revoked that consent while physically attacking the emt's/medics, and assuming his wife wasn't really a nurse but played one on a TV commercial once and was also drunk, then I could see this being a legitimate decision. I'll look for a more detailed report in case I read it wrong or the story was misprinted but as it stands I can't see a justification that would hold water in my area.

If you lay a finger on a patient without consent, provided the patient is competent to give it, it's battery. If you attempt to intimidate a patient in any way, it's assault. If you transport a competent patient against their will, it's kidnapping. I'm no lawyer but that's how the law was explained to me. Again, if the patient isn't competent to give consent that's a different story. Given the facts as they were related in this article there is no excuse for this in my mind.

That's just my opinion, as I said, I'm no attorney. I'd love to hear what one thinks though. Do we have any legal experts who post here?

edit: To clarify.

Edited July 17, 2012 by BillKaneEMT

[DFIB]

Backwoods Virginia judge and a good 'ol boy system might be a likely explanation for the verdict. You cant fix stupid but apparently you can find a judge to defend it.