CHATHAM, Va. — A former paramedic with Regional One EMS was sentenced to life, plus 20 years in prison, after he was convicted of aggravated sexual battery and object sexual penetration.
Keith Edward Dean, 60, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in the back of the ambulance during a transport to a hospital in June 2014. Dean was also accused of sexually assaulting women twice before, GoDanRiver reports.
In 1996, a young girl in West Virginia accused him of sexually assaulting her during transport in an ambulance. In 2004, a 13-year-old girl who was unresponsive and believed to have taken hallucinogens, made the same accusation.
In the June 2014 incident, which resulted in the conviction, Dean and EMT Jonathan Smith responded to a call for a woman in her bedroom and unresponsive, after an episode where she may have had a seizure.
Smith testified that after completing the patient assessment they loaded the patient into the ambulance for transport to a local hospital. Smith was driving and Dean was in the back.
Dean said he only lifted her shirt to use a stethoscope to check her breathing and has maintained that he never inappropriately touched her during the transport.
Prosecutors questioned why Dean’s DNA was found on her right breast. Dean said he performed a sternum rub on her at her house and possibly during the transport, and the DNA could have been transferred through sweat during the medical assessments.