Man arrested for stealing drugs from emergency room

A 38 year old Big Pine man was arrested Sunday for stealing medication from the emergency room at Fishermen’s Hospital in Marathon.

Deputy Vincent Torres responded to the hospital just before 3 p.m. because a nurse noticed someone had broken the security seals on a crash cart in the emergency room and had stolen a large amount of medication from the cart. She told Deputy Torres she suspected it was a previous patient, Christopher Frazier.

She said he was in the emergency room earlier. When he was discharged, she said she picked up his personal property bag and looked inside before giving it to him. She said in addition to his personal property, she saw a large amount of various medications in the bag which had not been prescribed for Frazier. When she asked him if the property bag was his he denied it was and hurried out of the hospital, leaving the bag there.

Security seals had been broken on the cart, which was beside the bed Frazier had occupied when he was in the hospital. An inventory of the cart revealed the medications in the bag did come from inside the cart. Other medication was missing and not found in the property bag.

A notice to be on the lookout for Frazier was put out to other deputies.

At 5:30 p.m. Sgt. Evan Calhoun was on patrol on Big Pine Key when he got a call about a trespasser on Avenue B, Big Pine Key. When he responded, he found Frazier in the area. He began to talk with Frazier as he investigated the trespassing call. During the initial encounter, he saw Frazier walk over to a recycling bin on the side of the road and discard something. Sgt. Calhoun performed a consensual pat down search of Frazier after seeing a bulge in one of his pockets that could have been a weapon. Instead he found a syringe of Lidocaine in one pocket and a vial of Epinephrine in another pocket.

At that point, Deputy Alexandra Davis radioed Sgt. Calhoun to let him know that Frazier was wanted for the earlier incident at Fishermen’s Hospital. Sgt. Calhoun then went to the recycling bin and found five more vials of various medications. All of the medications turned out to be from the crash cart at Fishermen’s Hospital.

Frazier was arrested. He was charged with grand theft and tampering with evidence. He was booked into jail.

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