An Olympia man, identified as Wade C. Buchanan, 47, scuffles with American Medical Response paramedics on Saturday afternoon in this image taken from surveillance video at the Chevron gas station near Mellen Street.
An Olympia man, identified as Wade C. Buchanan, 47, scuffles with American Medical Response paramedics on Saturday afternoon in this image taken from surveillance video at the Chevron gas station near Mellen Street.
An Olympia man, identified as Wade C. Buchanan, 47, scuffles with American Medical Response paramedics on Saturday afternoon in this image taken from surveillance video at the Chevron gas station near Mellen Street.
Centralia police will nominate a Vancouver, Wash., woman for the department’s Good Samaritan award after she came to the aid of AMR paramedics who were attacked while at a gas station Saturday.
The woman, Victoria Disney, a 49-year-old social worker, can be seen in the Chevron’s surveillance video footage sprinting across the gas station property to call for help. She then raced back to the scuffle to assist in subduing an Olympia man who apparently randomly attacked paramedics Saturday afternoon.
The man, 47-year-old Wade C. Buchanan, was filling his car up with gas when he suddenly turned and charged at a American Medical Response paramedics who were filling up their ambulance with gas near the Interstate 5 northbound onramp on Mellen Street in Centralia, according to police. The man allegedly hit and bit the paramedics. The medics struggled against the man, and Disney joined the fight to subdue him, which took several people, police, and ultimately pepper spray and a Taser for him to be detained.
“She didn’t hesitate and she got right in the mix of it when she thought those medics were going to get hurt,” said Sgt. Carl Buster of the Centralia Police Department. “She put aside her own safety to protect others.”
Buchanan was arrested for two counts of second-degree assault and one count of third-degree assault.
