Story Archive

Joyride

A “psychiatric patient” in the emergency room at The Medical Center in Columbus, Ga., ran for the door. Outside he found a parked ambulance. He smashed a window to get in, jumped behind the wheel, and took off, “dragging a paramedic” who tried to stop him, police say. Five minutes later the man, identified as Johnny Carter, 36, saw a large auto parts store, and “ran the ambulance into the building.” The damages: $115,000 to the ambulance, $35,000 to the building, and $80,000 to a BMW parked inside. “The voices inside his head told him to steal the ambulance and wreck it,” police say. (RC/Columbus Ledger-Enquirer) ...Those weren’t “voices inside his head,” that was the dispatcher on the ambulance’s radio.