Yorkshire Evening Post
WAKEFIELD, U.K. — A fake paramedic had to call on genuine emergency services when he fell 40ft down a cliff — after being distracted by a kitten.
Lee Westerman, of Normanton near Wakefield, was rescued by a coastguard helicopter after the fall drama near Hornsea
The 29-year-old spent three days in hospital recovering from broken ribs, a broken cheek and broken vertebrae in his back.
Last December, magistrates at Wakefield handed Mr. Westerman a five year ASBO, which bans him from posing as a paramedic or police officer after a string of bogus incidents.
Describing his fall last Sunday, Mr. Westerman said: “The doctors said I was very lucky to be alive after falling from such a height. I was walking along a path on the cliff top, it was about three or four feet away from the edge. I saw a kitten on a lower cliff playing in a drainpipe so I bent down to look at it. That’s the last thing I remember - I must have blacked out. The next thing I knew I was at the bottom.”
Chris Cook, of Hornsea Coastguard Rescue Team, said: “This rescue involved Humber Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, Hornsea Coastguard Rescue Team, Yorkshire Ambulance Service and Humberside Police.”
Magistrates heard last December how Mr. Westerman’s 10-year-old grey Renault Laguna estate was equipped with a two-tone siren, flashing blue lights under the front grille and flashing red lights in the rear lights. It had front and rear facing cameras linked to a split-screen monitor on the dashboard and two Citizen Band radios were in the vehicle,
He pulled up alongside a woman motorist in South Kirkby on April 9 2012 and started shouting at her, claiming she hadn’t indicated before stopping.
Mr. Westerman told her “I will give you a ticket next time,” before braking sharply in front of her car with white lights flashing at the rear of his.
Westerman followed and parked behind and stared at the woman while talking in to a hand held radio. After a trial, magistrates convicted him of impersonating a traffic officer, threatening behaviour and four charges relating to fitting flashing lights and a two-tone siren to his car plus one offence of using car likely to cause danger.
Westerman’s car had been spotted at the scene of a road crash on Wood Street, Wakefield in December 2009.
It was displaying an ambulance sign and he was wearing a paramedic style uniform.
In October 2010, the unemployed father-of-two told a heavily pregnant woman at a Sure Start class he had a private ambulance and could arrange a home birth.
Copyright 2013 Yorkshire Evening Post
All Rights Reserved