By Matthew Spolar
Concord Monitor
LOUDON, N.H. — A man stole an ambulance outside Lakes Region General Hospital in Laconia yesterday and drove off before the Loudon police arrested him by using a TASER in the middle of Route 106.
Stephen Cummings Jr., 26, faces felony charges of reckless conduct and receiving stolen property after jumping into the ambulance as he left the hospital, the police said. The ambulance was running in the emergency room parking lot as two employees were inside fetching a patient to transfer to a local nursing home, authorities said.
The search for the missing ambulance started just after 3:30 p.m., when two Stewart’s Ambulance employees returned to the parking lot with the patient, said Stacy Meier, executive director of Stewart’s Ambulance Service, an emergency vehicle company based in Meredith.
“They weren’t sure if it was one of our employees who had moved it, so they contacted us and contacted hospital security,” Meier said.
Loudon police Chief Bob Fiske said his department was contacted at 3:53 p.m. about an ambulance headed south on Route 106. He got in a cruiser with Cpl. Bob Akerstrom and headed north on the highway to intercept it.
The cruiser had gone about a half mile when the officers spotted the ambulance headed toward them. They turned on their emergency lights, made a U-turn and began pursuit.
Fiske said he moved alongside Cummings and motioned to him to pull over. But when the two made eye contact, he said, Cummings promptly turned on the ambulance’s emergency lights.
Cummings likely thought the lights would indicate to the officers “I’m going to an ambulance call, leave me alone,” Fiske said.
Seeing that Cummings did not intend to pull over, Fiske said, he then pulled ahead of Cummings and started a “rolling road block,” moving back and forth at a descending speed to prevent Cummings from going around him.
He said Cummings never made contact with the cruiser as he tried to evade it, and both vehicles eventually slowed to a stop where East Cooper Street intersects Route 106, a stone’s throw from the Loudon Police Department headquarters.
Cummings, who was unarmed, refused to get out of the ambulance, Fiske said. Fiske then opened the driver’s-side door and attempted to pull Cummings out of the seat, but after a struggle that lasted about two minutes, Akerstrom then came over and TASERed Cummings, Fiske said.
Cummings was arrested at 4:10 p.m., and the incident stopped traffic on the road for close to 20 minutes, Fiske said. Cummings was booked in Loudon and is being held in the Merrimack County jail in Boscawen. Bail was set at $40,000 cash.
He is scheduled to be arraigned at 11 this morning in Concord District Court. More charges could be forthcoming, Fiske said.
Meier said this was the first time a Stewart’s ambulance has been stolen since the company started in 1972. She said the company was reviewing its security measures, which she felt confident were still adequate.
“This was basically a random, opportunistic situation,” she said.
Officials at Lakes Region General Hospital did not return calls seeking comment on what Cummings may have been doing at the hospital.
Copyright 2009 Concord Monitor