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Jury trial begins in paramedic evidence tampering case By JOHN
HULTGREN FRANKFORT — A jury trial began this week in a civil action brought by Katherine McBride, an eastern Kentucky paramedic arrested in February 1996 for tampering with evidence. According to stories written in 1996 by JEMS magazine and the Louisville Courier Journal, Katherine McBride was working for P&B Ambulance in Floyd County when she responded to a patient with a small caliber gunshot wound to the chest in Martin, Kentucky. She had been informed that CPR was in progress, and apparently two nurses had started and then stopped CPR prior to her arrival on the scene. McBride reported that the patient was found by her to be pulseless but displayed a wide complex rhythm on the cardiac monitor. McBride initiated CPR, intubation, intravenous fluids and cardiac medications, and transported the patient to the hospital. The emergency department continued resuscitation attempts but were unsuccessful. McBride and her partners were arrested at the hospital by the Kentucky State Police for disturbing a crime scene. According to JEMS, Floyd County Coroner Roger Nelson stated "They overruled a nurse at the scene and messed up our investigation." McBride was jailed but returned to work after bail was posted. Nelson claimed then that P&B Ambulance had a long history of transporting corpses for the revenue, and that it was his intention to "stop it." The owners of P&B Ambulance had been recently convicted of Medicare fraud, and since the incident the ambulance service has been sold. Within days of the incident, McBride was fired from her full-time paramedic position at Elkhorn City Ambulance. Floyd County dropped the initial misdemeanor charges and convened a grand jury seeking felony indictments for "tampering with evidence." McBride was forced to spend $10,000 for a legal retainer. The grand jury never indicted her. McBride filed a civil suit in District Court in October 1996 against the Kentucky State Police, Trooper David Maynard, the Floyd County Coroner's Office, and Coroner Roger Nelson for violating her Fourth Amendment rights by wrongful arrest, defamation, and slander. In November 1996, District Court ruled that there was probable cause to arrest McBride, and that the trooper and coroner had acted appropriately. The case was then reviewed by the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati in December, 1998. Twenty-eight days later the Appeals Court unanimously ruled that although the coroner couldn't be held liable for the federal claims arising out of the arrest, the trooper and the Kentucky State Police could be -- and in their opinion no probable cause for the arrest existed. The case was remanded back to U.S. District Court in Frankfort for trial on the federal and state issues. Jury trial began yesterday with opening arguments and is expected to continue through this week. EMS and fire personnel wishing to show support for McBride can attend the trial, which is open to the public. The trial is being held in the John C. Watts Federal Building, third floor courtroom, on West Broadway in Frankfort beginning each day at 9 a.m.
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