Suspect Flees, Leaving Behind the Hospital Bill

A Sun City man wanted on suspicion of armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, theft and felony drunk driving walked out of a Mission Viejo hospital Nov. 13 despite repeated requests by doctors to have him taken into custody, hospital officials said.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department has since launched a statewide search for Anthony Garcia, 24. Officials at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center are angry with sheriff’s officials, who they say would not arrest Garcia because they did not want to accept liability for his $37,964.49 hospital bill.

Such efforts by law enforcement agencies to avoid liability for suspects’ medical bills has become a growing problem, according to officials at the Mission Viejo hospital and at Orange County’s largest trauma center.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department has acknowledged that Garcia’s medical bill played a role in its failure to take him into custody, but the agency has refused to accept responsibility for his going free.

“There was a breakdown in the system,” said Lt. Bill Caldwell of the Lake Elsinore substation, adding that detectives planned to arrest Garcia when he was discharged.

“Of course medical bills come into play when you’re dealing with public funds,” he said. “But placing fault now is Monday morning quarterbacking. I honestly believe it was not our fault.”

Garcia was in the hospital for 19 days, hospital officials said. He left without waiting to be discharged. Dressed in a patient’s robe, he walked on crutches to a friend’s waiting vehicle.

He had been admitted on Oct. 26, the day police say he ran a stolen getaway truck head on into a van driven by Richard E. Wheatfill, a San Juan Capistrano dentist. Wheatfill, a father of five who was on his way to a Boy Scout camp, was critically injured and also is hospitalized at the medical center in Mission Viejo.

The crash on Ortega Highway east of San Juan Capistrano happened not long after Garcia had allegedly robbed a motorist of his vehicle at gunpoint in Lake Elsinore in Riverside County.

Sheriff’s officials had asked the hospital to alert them when Garcia was about to be discharged and would have arrested him then, Caldwell said. In that case, Garcia would have been liable for the bills instead of the Sheriff’s Department.

Sheriff’s detectives had obtained arrest warrants for Garcia during his hospitalization. They named him in connection with a week-long crime spree in October, during which he allegedly used an automatic handgun to rob two convenience stores, steal two vehicles and threaten to kill at least two victims.

The botched arrest outraged doctors, Wheatfill’s family and officials of the Mormon Church, of which Wheatfill is a prominent member.

Dr. Thomas Shaver, director of trauma services at Mission Hospital, said doctors and nurses were baffled at the way Riverside sheriff’s investigators “shirked their responsibility.”

“How in the world can something like this happen?” Shaver asked. “We’ve called (the Sheriff’s Department), talked to them, told (them) that he might leave. . . . Now what will it cost to catch this man who they already had in their hands?”

Wheatfill’s wife, Robin Wheatfill, said she was equally baffled. “How can this possibly be?” she asked.

Trauma experts at UCI Medical Center in Orange, who were unfamiliar with the Garcia case, said law enforcement agencies increasingly try to dodge hospital bills by not arresting suspects when they are hospitalized.

“If you include driving under the influence cases, it happens daily,” said Dr. Kenneth Waxman, chief of trauma services at the medical center. “If there is an injury and a patient is brought to our facility, there almost never is a citation. . . . It’s costing us millions of dollars a year. It’s a known phenomenon, a longstanding problem that may be a little worse now.”

Shaver said a group of hospitals in Southern California is planning a class-action lawsuit against law enforcement agencies that “bring sick people in and then leave them.”

Both Garcia and Wheatfill were taken by helicopter to the Mission Viejo hospital.

Garcia had a broken hip and internal injuries. Doctors said Garcia’s blood alcohol content was 0.17%, more than twice the legal limit for driving. The suspect also had a significant level of amphetamines in his system, they said.

Wheatfill had two broken ankles, a crushed right leg, a broken jaw and numerous internal injuries. He was in a coma for a period but is now conscious and listed in fair condition.

Doctors at the Mission Viejo trauma center said they realized almost immediately that Garcia would be a difficult patient. Nurses said that Garcia caused disturbances in the hospital throughout his stay by leaving his ward and wandering about the hospital.

“I recognized the fact that he was a mobile guy and could walk out of here, so I ordered a nurse to notify the police” about Nov. 3, Shaver said.

As early as Oct. 29, hospital officials said they informed sheriff’s investigators that Garcia’s condition had stabilized and that he could be taken to the jail ward in Riverside General Hospital. He still required hip surgery, which could be performed there, they said.

Hospital records show that a trauma center nurse notified the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department on Oct. 30 that they needed to “pick Garcia up.”

In that conversation, a Detective Preston insisted that “Riverside County will not pick up the bill” because Garcia was not under arrest when he was taken to the hospital, according to hospital records, copies of which were obtained by The Times.

The hospital records also show that Preston told hospital officials on Nov. 8 that investigators would arrest Garcia after the suspect was discharged.

Hospital Administrator Gary Fybel said he placed several calls to Riverside Sheriff’s Sgt. Gene Van Wegen on Veterans Day urging him to take Garcia into custody. Van Wegen told Fybel that he did not have the staff to make the arrest, Fybel said.

“I told him I thought that was unacceptable,” Fybel said. “A key suspect in two armed robberies and a felony drunk driving, but they did not have the staff to come out and arrest him? From a public safety point of view, asking the hospital to take on that responsibility is unacceptable.”

Lt. Caldwell said detectives did not want to arrest Garcia while he was receiving treatment because the Mission Viejo hospital does not have a jail ward.

Asked why investigators did not put a police guard in Garcia’s room, Caldwell said detectives were told that Garcia was sedated and that he was not going anywhere.

“It is unfortunate that he left the hospital . . . but we don’t have the resources to” place a guard in Garcia’s room, he said.

“I do not have an answer as to why it happened and to how it happened,” Caldwell said. “Medical bills come into play, but there’s no specific guidelines. Each case is treated on an individual basis.”

Garcia is a suspect in several crimes in Riverside County, according to the California Highway Patrol and the Sheriff’s Department. The first is an armed robbery of a Circle K market in the Homeland unincorporated area on Oct. 20, in which two men took two cases of beer and $36, while threatening the clerk with a handgun.

He is also a suspect in an armed robbery later that day, in which a truck and cash were taken at gunpoint from a man at a gas station in Homeland.

The last crime for which he is being sought is the Oct. 26 armed robbery in Lake Elsinore.

The assailant in that case got out of a stolen truck, drew a pistol and ran up to another truck that had stopped behind him, Caldwell said.

The gunman pointed the pistol at the driver, took his wallet and told him to “run for your life,” Caldwell said.

The gunman then headed west on the winding Ortega Highway where his truck collided with Wheatfill’s van. Wheatfill, a Scout leader for the past 20 years, was heading to the Cleveland National Forest for a training session on wilderness backpacking.