ASHEVILLE, N.C. — A former Mission Hospital paramedic was charged with sexual battery for allegedly inappropriately touching a female patient in the back of an ambulance.
Tou Vang Lee, 43, was arrested Tuesday following a police investigation and search warrant after a 20-year-old patient reported her claims to the hospital on Aug. 10, 2014, the day the incident occurred, the Citizen-Times reports.
She claims Lee touched her inappropriately over her clothes while she was lying on a gurney in the ambulance, according to a documents from a search warrant filed by Asheville police detective William Olson.
Hospital officials initially refused to hand over documents in Lee’s personnel file, Olson said. Once it was obtained, he noted it included 807 pages of the hospital’s internal investigation into the matter.
Lee was also accused of sexual misconduct in December 2012 by a woman who was transported in an ambulance. No charged were filed in that case.
According to the report, the patient stated that after arriving at the ER around 3 a.m., she was transported to a different Mission Hospital campus around 7 a.m. by two paramedics; a female driver and Lee, who rode in the back of the ambulance.
Lee asked her if she had any pain and before she could answer he began to press on her chest and sternum, palpated her knee and vagina over her clothes, and finished by pressing on her left breast before covering her with a blanket. He then reached under the blanket and squeezed her left breast, according to Olson’s narrative of her statement.
Lee will appear in Buncombe County District Court on Feb. 4.