Here comes another weird one out of the Sunshine State…
A Florida anesthesiologist has been charged with driving under the influence, criminal mischief, and felony battery of a law enforcement officer after spitting blood in a state trooper’s face, ABCNews reports.
SEE ALSO: Georgia Cop Gets Off For Shooting Teen To Death
Dr. Zachary Bird nearly hit a state trooper’s car as he drove along the Central Florida Greeneway early Sunday morning. Troopers pulled him over and conducted a field sobriety test on Bird. He failed it and was placed under arrest for drunk driving.
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Capt. John Lynch and trooper Mark Casselbury put Bird in the back of a police vehicle and that is where things got bizarre. Officers found $40,000 in cash in his pockets, for one. Then, Bird began yelling at the officers, accusing them of stealing his money. He also began kicking the car door from the inside and banging his head against the car’s plexiglass partition. Florida Highway Patrol spokeswoman Sgt. Kim Montes says that, because there were no drugs or weapons on Bird, “his money was in his pocket the whole time.”
WATCH Dr. Bird Hit His Head Against TheĀ Police Car’s Plexiglass Partition
Montes said Bird’s behavior was unusually vile–especially for a doctor:
The troopers eventually pulled Bird out of the back of the car because they worried he might seriously injure himself, and that’s when he spat an entire mouthful of blood in the face of Sgt. Chuck Porter, Montes said.
“We’ve had people fight us, punch us, even spit on us,” she said. “We expect that from some people we arrest, but a doctor knows how serious it is to contaminate someone with bodily fluid. That’s the most unnerving part.”
Bird was taken to a hospital handcuffed to a gurney where he kicked and damaged property. He was threatening and combative to staff there as well. Bird was later released on bond. The patrol car required $300 worth of hazardous cleaning. When police searched Bird’s vehicle, they found an additional $14,000, along with “a vial of an unidentifiable liquid and a bottle of the erectile dysfunction drug Cialis, but the pills inside the bottle were also unidentifiable.”
The drugs have been sent to a lab for testing. The officer on the receiving end of Bird’s blood-spitting attack has secured a warrant to obtain a sample of the doctor’s blood for HIV and other infectious disease testing. Bird has a clean record, but the hospital that employed him suspended his contract saying that he “was no longer welcome there.”
