Modesto Hospital Employee Fired After Video Shows Him Arriving At Work On Two Flat Tires
MODESTO (CBS13) — A Modesto hospital employee is out of a job and under investigation as video shows him driving to work possibly impaired on two disintegrated tires.
Modesto Police say they are concerned a man who worked at Memorial Medical Center was not only possibly under the influence, but may have been involved in at least one hit-and-run accident on his way to work.
What Stephen Boski and his fiancée saw as they followed the truck on Mother's Day shocked them so much, they decided to record it.
The couple says they followed a truck traveling on rims as the back and front tires had disintegrated. They thought maybe he was an injured patient.
"I thought he was hurt. My first image I thought was, oh my God, he got shot or stabbed and he's just racing to get to the hospital," Stephen said.
According to him, the man behind the wheel pulled into Modesto's Memorial Medical Center, then stumbled out of his truck. The couple offered the man in the truck help, but he declined.
That's when Stephen says the man wasn't injured at all, and it appeared to him, he was drunk. Stephen says the man wore hospital scrubs and a hospital ID badge.
"Gotta go to work, so don't worry about it," the man says on Stephen's video.
Modesto Police Lt. Brian Findlen says the damage on the truck and the man's responses would have been enough to investigate the incident as a possible DUI, had police been called.
"At this point, what we're dealing with is a potential hit-and-run investigation," he said.
As police look into whether they can connect the truck to incidents in the area, a spokesperson for the hospital released a statement, saying in part:
"We dealt with thoroughly with this particular personnel issue and this individual no longer works at Memorial Medical Center. We are grateful to our staff for taking an active role in addressing this matter and taking steps to protect our patients."
They wouldn't say why the employee no longer works there, or what his job was, or whether his drive into work on Sunday was his last.
The video also shows Stephen talking to other hospital staff, who he says heard the screeching of the rims on the pavement and went to see what it was coming from.
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