Judge clears man in two Dec. 23 cases
By Paul Purpura
Times-Picayune
Copyright 2007 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
JEFFERSON, La. — An emergency medical technician accused last year of stealing cash from two patients he treated on the same day in East Jefferson was found innocent Thursday.
Christopher Tubre, 35, of Grand Isle, had been charged with one count each of felony theft and misdemeanor theft in the alleged crimes that happened in a Metairie home and an Elmwood convenience store Dec. 23.
“This has been very embarrassing to me,” Tubre said Friday. “I just want people to know I didn’t do this, and the court determined I didn’t do this.”
Tubre waived his right to a jury trial, leaving the decision to Judge Kernan “Skip” Hand of the 24th Judicial District Court.
After hearing testimony, Hand rendered the verdicts that acquitted Tubre, finding that in one of the cases, prosecutors had no victim -- the man died two weeks after his cash turned up missing.
That man, James Smith, 46, reported the theft of $238 before he died Jan. 1.
In the other case, the felony theft, Tubre was accused of stealing between $300 and $500 of rent money from a drawer in a Metairie home. Lacking concrete evidence, that case boiled down to the victims’ word against Tubre’s.
“The only thing the victims had in common is they both called an ambulance on the same day and Tubre responded to both calls,” Assistant District Attorney Laura Cannizaro argued.
Tubre was a paramedic for East Jefferson General Hospital, which suspended him pending the outcome of his legal woes. He said Friday he wants to return to work.
“I just want people to know I didn’t do this, and the court determined I didn’t do this,” he said. “It’s been a hard year for me and my family, and I want to put this behind me and get on with what I love doing, which is taking care of people.”
Tubre testified Thursday that he took the cash from Smith in the store, but only to secure it for the patient. He said he returned it in the ambulance.
Cannizaro provided testimony from a nurse who said Tubre never logged cash in at Ochsner Medical Center, where the man was taken for treatment. Cannizaro also argued that, if the man was able to walk out of the store, he was lucid enough and Tubre could have returned the cash.
The prosecutor asked Hand to “make the inference that lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice, on the same day.”
Angelica Tenorio, the paramedic who was with Tubre at the convenience store, also was booked with theft, but the Jefferson Parish district attorney’s office did not accept the charge.