Officer Involved In Hospital Incident Placed On Paid Leave

by The Chattanooga Pulse Staff
Jun. 22, 2010

The Chattanooga Police officer who was accused of interfering with a man trying to bring his wife to the hospital last week has been placed on paid administrative leave.

Officer James Daves nearly collided with a car driven by Eric Wright last Wednesday when Wright drove through a red light at 3rd and Central.

He followed Wright to Erlanger where Wright claims he was blocked from entering the emergency room.

Officer Daves’ police report on the incident directly contradicts Wright’s claims, but the department has not made any comment on the discrepancies in the two stories other than to say that Daves was “doing his job”.

Daves will be on leave until Internal Affairs can conduct a full investigation.

This past Wednesday, Aline Wright began suffering symptoms of a stroke. A cancer survivor who lost a leg and is in constant danger of stroke symptoms due to medication, knew that she needed to get to the emergency room as quickly as possible.

So her newlywed husband of just four days, Jesse Wright, put her in their car and drove to Erlanger. Along the way, Wright – with his emergency flasher on and blowing his horn – slowly ran two red lights.

It was after running the second light and nearly colliding with a police car that Chattanooga Police officer Daves turned on his emergency lights and began following the vehicle.

Jesse figured they were so close to Erlanger that it was obvious where he was heading, so he proceeded to the emergency room entrance.

That was when, according to Jesse and Aline, officer Daves physically blocked them from entering the hospital, angry over Jesse not stopping after running the red lights.

Jesse was finally able to get around the officer and hand over Aline to the waiting medical personnel. Officer Daves then is alleged to have followed the two into the emergency room, to the point where medical staff repeatedly asked him to leave as he was getting in their way.

However, other sources stated that Officer Dave did not prevent the Wrights from entering the hospital, nor did he ever enter any medical room.

In Daves’ written report, he claims that Jesse scraped his arm with his fingernail after the officer grabbed his arm, as well as claiming that Jesse placed his wife in an ER room “with no permission of the hospital staff”.

Jesse, a medic who works for Erlanger, claims he had alerted the ER staff over the phone on his way there, and they were already waiting for them to arrive.

The most damning claim in the story happened when Jesse was told by Daves to turn himself into the Hamilton County Jail, where he would be charged with a felony. Jesse claims that when he asked what felony he would be charged with, Daves said “I’ll think of something you sh– head.”

When Jesse went to the jail the next day, with a television camera crew following him, there was no record of any arrest warrant.

Then on Friday, Erlanger security came to Aline’s room and informed Jesse that he was under arrest and they needed to take him to jail after all. Once there, he was charged with assaulting a police officer, disorderly conduct, reckless endangerment, evading arrest, two red light violations and registration violation.

Because of the nature of the charges, he has now been suspended from Erlanger without pay until the matter is resolved.