JANUARY
16--A teenage boy wearing a white lab coat and carrying a stethoscope
masqueraded as a doctor at a Florida hospital for a month until his
Doogie Howser act was derailed this week, cops say.
The 17-year-old, whose name was redacted from a West Palm Beach Police
Department report, was confronted Tuesday afternoon by officers at St.
Mary's Medical Center, where the juvenile introduced himself as a
doctor.
The phony physician’s gambit unraveled after a
patient alerted OB/GYN staffers that “a young black male who appeared to
be a child was dressed as a doctor” and was inside a nearby examination
room, police noted.
The boy was outfitted in a white lab coat
bearing the St. Mary’s logo (the word "anesthesiology" was embroidered
on the garment’s front side). The imposter also "had a stethoscope
around his neck and a face mask," according to the report.
Hospital workers told police that the teenager
was inside an exam room while an actual doctor, Sebastian Kent,
conducted a patient examination.
As first reported by the Sun Sentinel, the
teenager’s mother told police that her son is "under the care of a
doctor" and refuses to take prescribed medicine. Cops and hospital
officials declined to pursue charges against the boy, who was detained
by officers as he sought to leave the medical facility.
As detailed in the police report, cops spoke to
security guard Christian D'Amato, who said the teenager "is known around
the hospital as a 'doctor,'" and had been "seen on several floors of
the hospital by several hospital employees entering patients rooms and
talking to hospital employees."
But D'Amato apparently never questioned whether the minor was, in fact, an actual medical professional.
Police reported that "multiple" witnesses said
they had spotted the teenager "walking around the hospital for
approximately one month pretending to be a doctor."
Kent, 63, said that he had never previously seen
the juvenile at the St. Mary’s outpatient facility. But the doctor
subsequently approached cops to report that he had located a note on his
desk from the boy, who asked whether he could “shadow” the physician on
his rounds.
Despite witness accounts, a St. Mary's
spokesperson denied that the underage impersonator had contact with
patients or gained access to restricted medical care areas.
Cops also spoke to officials at a second West
Palm Beach hospital, the Good Samaritan Medical Center. The hospital’s
security director, Karen Kingsmill, recounted spotting a “younger black
male dressed as a doctor walking out of the Emergency Room entrance last
week.” Kingsmill added that she “did not recognize him as being a
doctor and thought it was suspicious he was hanging around near the
‘secured area’ doors.” A review of security footage revealed the suspect
“walking around the Emergency Room lobby in a white lab coat” on
January 7.
A search of the Honda Odyssey that the teenager
drove to St. Mary’s turned up a “white size 36 lab coat on a clothes
hanger” and a “black doctor or nurse scrub-style top, size medium.”
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/bizarre/doogie-howser-wannabe-busted-786450
1 comment:
Mathew Scheidt is white tell the truth....LIAR!!
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