Doctor’s Wife Alleges Mistreatment : Lawsuits: Patricia Wilmeth says a sheriff’s sergeant arrested and injured her as her husband was trying to aid a girl who had been struck by a car.

The wife of a Thousand Oaks doctor who for years has headed a volunteer medical squad at the Sheriff’s Department has sued a sheriff’s sergeant for allegedly arresting and battering her in front of the couple’s Westlake Village home.

Patricia Wilmeth’s arrest last September followed a heated argument among her husband, Dr. Jo Wilmeth, the sheriff’s sergeant and two county firefighters over the medical treatment of an 8-year-old girl who had been struck by a car near the Wilmeths’ home, according to the Wilmeths and an attorney for the Sheriff’s Department.

Patricia Wilmeth, 42, who acknowledges joining that argument, was arrested for allegedly interfering with veteran officer Robert K. Sparks, a deputy who was promoted to sergeant this month.

The district attorney’s office declined to file charges against Patricia Wilmeth. Prosecutors also rejected a battery charge by a firefighter against Dr. Wilmeth, who acknowledges pushing the man away from the injured girl, a county attorney confirmed Tuesday.

Patricia Wilmeth filed suit May 4, accusing Sparks of grabbing her around the neck from behind, dragging her to his patrol car, then cutting her forehead and elbow and injuring her back while forcing her into the vehicle.

Sparks refused comment Tuesday. But attorney Alan Wisotsky, speaking for the fire and sheriff’s departments, said Sparks was not disciplined by the department and appeared to have acted “in accordance with acceptable procedures.”

“It’s abundantly clear that Mrs. Wilmeth should have stood aside,” Wisotsky said. “She may be a doctor’s wife, but she certainly had no standing to interfere with the management of this accident scene.”

Wisotsky said Patricia Wilmeth’s verbal exchange with Sparks rose to the level of a possible crime because she argued aggressively with the officer, stepping toward him just before the arrest. Her actions could have incited violence from the crowd that had gathered on quiet Valley Spring Drive in the exclusive North Ranch subdivision of Westlake Village, the attorney said.

However, the Wilmeths and a neighbor who witnessed her arrest said in interviews that she was at the scene only briefly, never threatened the officer and had turned to go back to her house after Sparks ordered her away.

In addition, Sparks’ actions at the accident scene were apparently near an end since the injured girl--who has nearly recovered from two broken legs--had been taken away in an ambulance. Dr. Wilmeth said he had just informed Sparks and a firefighter that he was going to file a complaint with their superiors for badgering him while he treated the girl.

“I stood there listening to this fireman and this officer tell my husband that he was all wrong, that he could be arrested and he should not have treated this child,” Patricia Wilmeth said.

“Finally, I chimed in, ‘Haven’t you heard of the Good Samaritan laws?’ And Sparks yelled, ‘You get out of here!’ ” she said. “I threw up my hands and turned to walk away. In a split second, this officer went completely out of control. He choked me with his arm, and he drug me to his car, and threw me on the hood.”

Patricia Wilmeth said that she is still being treated for back problems, but that the four-inch gash on her forehead required no stitches and has healed.

In the Wilmeths’ view, the larger issue in the case is not her arrest and injury, but the problem they said created tensions in the first place: The officer’s and firefighters’ ignorance of state law pertaining to emergency care at the scene of an accident.

Under state law, the person with the top medical credentials at an accident has authority to assume control over treatment of the injury victims. Dr. Wilmeth was the ranking authority in this case, since the firefighters had been trained only as emergency medical technicians, a designation achieved with less than 100 hours of training.

A key issue in such cases, however, is whether the ranking medical authority will assume responsibility for accompanying injured people to a hospital, said Barbara Brodfuehrer, administrator of emergency medical services for Ventura County.

Police officers and firefighters do not have the authority to demand such a commitment from a physician, but once paramedics arrive, the doctor must commit or relinquish control, Brodfuehrer said.

Dr. Wilmeth, who for 17 years has led a medical squad of search-and-rescue volunteers for the Sheriff’s Department, said disputes over medical authority have arisen repeatedly between his volunteers and firefighters and paramedics in Ventura County.

“I think these guys are really having a problem with who has medical authority at the scene,” Dr. Wilmeth said.

In the September incident, firefighters “really wanted to get me away from that little girl, whether they could help her or not. A firefighter’s feelings were hurt, and he wasn’t even considering the patient.”

As Wilmeth knelt in the street beside the injured girl, he said, firefighters and Sparks confronted him several times during the 15-minute incident, ordering him to move aside and demanding identification even though Sparks recognized the doctor as a longtime search-and-rescue physician.

At one point, a firefighter refused to assist the doctor by checking the girl’s blood pressure or giving her oxygen, but another finally provided the help as requested, Wilmeth said.

Later, firefighter Stanley Saez threw a stethoscope in Wilmeth’s face and in another confrontation pushed the doctor aside to try to put a neck collar on the injured girl, the doctor said.

“He was literally pushing me away from the patient. I pushed him back and told him he was going to cause internal bleeding,” Wilmeth said. The doctor said he had examined young Elizabeth Minihane for neck injuries and she apparently had none. She was alert but frightened, he said.

Wisotsky, the county’s lawyer, said that reports by Officer Sparks, firefighter Saez and Wayne Michael, a fire captain, also indicate that disputes arose over medical authority at the scene.

“Wilmeth said he would not go to the hospital, but that he was more qualified to deal with the victim at the scene. And he emphasized he was in charge,” Wisotsky said, paraphrasing a firefighter’s report. “He then threw his identification to the ground.”

Marilyn Minihane, the injured girl’s mother, remembers being frightened and outraged by what was happening.

“The doctor was kneeling next to her. He was keeping her legs in one position. But he was getting a lot of hassle from them, which was very bad because he was only trying to help,” said Minihane.

“All I wanted was for her to be taken to the hospital, but all they were interested in was who was in charge,” she said.

Even when an ambulance arrived, there was a delay as paramedics discussed the situation with Sparks and the firefighters, Dr. Wilmeth and Minihane said.

“By this time I was praying that the paramedics would just come and take her to the hospital. That was my every intention,” Wilmeth said.

But as he tried to explain the girl’s injuries to a female paramedic, “She said, ‘Either you ride all the way to the hospital or you release her to us.’ At the same time, she said, ‘I will have you arrested if you don’t leave.’ ”

Wilmeth said he moved away from the girl and to the curb.

Patricia Folden, the paramedic from Pruner Ambulance, declined comment and referred questions to her employer.

Donald Pruner, owner of the ambulance company, would not answer specific questions about the incident, but he added:

“It shouldn’t have been handled in the way it was. Everybody out there is supposed to be professional, and it wasn’t handled that way. The kid doesn’t need to be lying in the street while everybody’s having a big harangue.”

The incident and its aftermath are apparently ending a long relationship between the Sheriff’s Department and Dr. Wilmeth, who said he is being eased out of its search-and-rescue operation.

The doctor, who is chief of the hyperbaric unit at Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, helped found the sheriff’s Medical Advisory Board in 1973. The board is an unpaid squad of doctors and nurses that is dispatched about once a week to emergency scenes.

In the 1970s, Wilmeth also was chairman of the county advisory committee that helped meld state law on emergency care into county procedures now followed by area police, fire and paramedic agencies.

“Seventeen years of jumping out of helicopters is gone. And it’s, ‘thanks for nothing,’ ” Dr. Wilmeth said Wednesday. “It’s absolutely a disappointment. They’ve all treated me like a piece of junk ever since this incident. I’ve been shunned.”

Sheriff’s Sgt. Earl Mathews said the 10-member squad of doctors and nurses Wilmeth has headed is being reorganized, but that Wilmeth is still its director.

“He’s done a good job over the years,” said Mathews, who has worked with Wilmeth for 14 years. “And as far as I know he continues to do a good job.”