Posted on 05/07/2006 5:19:26 AM PDT by Mr. Brightside
Father Faces Felony Charges For Rushing To Injured Daughter's Side
POSTED: 12:22 pm EDT May 4, 2006 UPDATED: 6:27 pm EDT May 4, 2006
NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. -- A panicked father who pushed past rescue workers to get to his injured daughter at the scene of a car crash now faces felony charges.
Karl Swanson of Holiday, Fla., told the St. Petersburg Times he got a call from his daughter's cell phone late Tuesday: "Listen," the caller said, "your daughter's been in a terrible accident. She's in critical condition. It doesn't look good."
Florida Highway Patrol troopers said the 48-year-old anesthesiologist drove into the accident scene, narrowly missing an emergency helicopter, then pushed past a trooper and a paramedic to get to his 18-year-old daughter's side.
Swanson was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer and battery on an emergency medical care provider. He is free on $10,000 bond.
"Basically, he made a very serious and stressful situation worse," Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Larry Coggins said. "When people just relax for a second and listen to reason, we always let them see their loved one."
Swanson's daughter, 18-year-old Krystyna, remains in serious condition at a hospital. On Wednesday, he defended his response to the crash.
"They told me my daughter was dying," he said Wednesday. "They told me to go there. So that's what I did."
He probably just pushed past the officer, if he even saw him. NO ONE stands between me and my children. NO ONE. Funny, I didn't see Cynthia McKinney with a $10,000 bail for hitting an officer.
Government agents are always right.
Those who defend government agents are always right about government agents always being right.
Those who don't defend government agents are wrong.
agreed
And yet our people in Congress can punch officers and not face a charge.
I don't know of a parent here who wouldn't have done the same.
He let me go.
I don't know what happened, but battery can be simple touching, particularly of a police person. Case probably will not go to trial.
The father is an anesthesiologist and probably had more medical training than the paramedics. "even if I put my loved one in more danger." Just who makes that call, the cops? What realy happened here is the guy questioned"authority figures" so they charge him with a felony just to "teach him a leson". How dare he question their authority.
Nor will you.
Laws are only to keep the pesants in line and to protect the Royalty from them.
They are not indended to interfere with the activities of the Royalty as demonestrated by the Mc Kinney and Kennedy incidents.
What's your purpose in asking that question?
Nope...it's Tami and I live in CT.
He should also be charged with the more serious offense of allowing his daughter to be named "Krystyna."
This is what he looks like in real life. This is what he looks like in his ad offering plastic surgery in Clearwater, Florida. 
This guy must hate his kid because he did everything he could to try to kill her.
You are assuming facts not in evidence. He didn't necessarily "almost crash into" a helicopter, that's just what the pissed off cop said, and there's no evidence that the helicopter in question was there to evac his daughter.
I drove an ambulance for a living in the NYC area in the 70s. There are a lot of "professional" cops and "emergency workers" who are way less about being professional and way more about being "in charge." We called them "Napoleons." It sounds to me like this is the case here. Yeah the father was out of line but I bet the cop was all about "I'm in charge here! You do what I say!"
In NY in the 70s the brand new good Samaritan law said that the senior medical person on the scene of a medical emergency has authority over all other personnel there, police, fire, ambulance, etc.. The father in question is listed as an anesthesiologist, which is an MD. In NY, at least under the law at the time I worked there, he could have told them to go take a flying leap and been within his rights. In fact he could have had them arrested for interfering with him.
I had just such a confrontation with a "town clown" cop in the town where I grew up. In addition to working the professional ambulance I also was one of the crew chiefs for the local volunteer ambulance. We got a call about a woman down in the small grocery store in "the village" section of town. We were there within 5 minutes and I started to assess the patient. She was out cold and I couldn't revive her, though her vitals were fine. The only cop on the scene told me to grab her legs and we'd drag her outside to get her out of the way. I refused and told him I was in charge of the patient and to stay out of my way. I had EMT training and I knew that he had failed his last advanced lifesaving course because I'd helped to teach it. I also knew about an incident at a local horse riding competition where he and some other local cops had moved a teen aged girl after she was injured (but conscious) without securing her neck, which was broken, and she died. This was before the ambulance arrived on scene. I wasn't on that crew and it all got hushed up, but it really pissed me off.
The cop in this incident freaked after I "refused to follow his orders" and was going to arrest me. I stood up (I'm bigger than he is) and quietly, nose to nose, cited chapter and verse of the NY State law that said if he interfered with me I'd have him arrested and charged and make sure that he was prosecuted (which I could do in both that town and county as I had the connections). He stormed off and we took care of the patient (she'd had a reaction to medication and we needed to get her to the hospital before they could diagnose and properly treat her, but she ended up being fine).
Two hours later I got a call from the town chief of police ready to read me the riot act because of the story his officer had told him. I calmly explained the real situation to him and he ended up agreeing that I had done the only thing I could (particularly after I reminded him of the horse riding incident). The cop didn't get fired, but he was taken off of regular patrol for 6 months and put on traffic.
Napoleons are almost as bad as over eager volunteers. We said they had "voly fever." It's frightening when you have a Napoleon with voly fever. It's even worse when you get them on a Friday night, worse still if it's a Friday when the welfare checks come out and worst of all when that night is a full moon. I usually scheduled time off when all of those came together.
FL Highway patrol officers tend to have a VERY PISS POOR attitude.
I am very sorry but in this case the cops are dead wrong. Some rectum with badge fever would have kept a father from his daughter's last moments.
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