North Carolina Paramedic Arrested on Drug Related Charges

A Wilkes County paramedic has been arrested on charges related to stealing morphine and other drugs from his job with the Wilkes County Emergency Medical Service and his volunteer service with the Wilkes Rescue Squad.

Joseph Wilson Earp Jr., 40, was arrested Thursday night at his home in Boomer.

Authorities say he sometimes took the unused portion from a morphine vial for personal use. They also believe that he sometimes popped the top of a morphine vial, drew morphine out with a syringe, injected a substance back into the vial to cover up the theft and then glued back the tamper-proof cap. Those suspect vials are being sent to the state lab for analysis.

Gregg Hendren, the Wilkes County EMS director, said that supervisors check each drug vial before it goes out on an ambulance. They don't believe that any of the tampered vials were used.

"As soon as we noticed we had a problem, we checked it to make sure a patient got what they were supposed to get," he said.

Authorities said that Earp took about 200 milligrams of drugs, almost all of it from morphine that came in 10-milligram vials. They say that he also took small amounts of the painkiller Demerol and Ativan, a drug used to relieve symptoms of anxiety.

The Wilkes County Sheriff's Office and North Wilkesboro police each charged Earp with four counts of embezzling a controlled substance, two counts of creating a counterfeit controlled substance, two counts of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud and two counts of larceny by an employee, all felonies.

Hendren said that drugs came up missing during inventories this past summer at EMS and rescue-squad bases in the county and in North Wilkesboro.

They notified the sheriff's office, North Wilkesboro police, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and the State Bureau of Investigation.

They tried to keep the investigation quiet, he said, because "we wanted to catch this person."

"Everybody here had to be a suspect," Hendren said. Wilkes EMS has 34 full-time paramedics and 14 part-time paramedics.

In August, a number of procedures were changed to tighten the control and tracking of drugs at EMS.

Before that, the drugs were kept locked up, but in a common place where all the paramedics could have access to them.

The new procedures require a medic to sign for drugs that are in tagged boxes that can be opened only if the tag is cut.

It's not uncommon for a morphine vial to contain more drug than a patient needs. The procedure had been for a medic to squirt out the unused portion in front of another paramedic.

Now, the paramedic must dispose of the waste in front of a supervisor and both sign a statement attesting to that.

The EMS also switched from using morphine kept in vials to using morphine in glass ampules that must be broken to get to the drug.

The thefts and tampering stopped for a time once the new procedures were in place, Hendren said, but then started again.

Earp was fired Nov. 1. He had worked for EMS since 2000. He also resigned from the rescue squad.

Hendren said that Earp was a good medic, and the whole thing is hard to believe.

"Our main concern was our patients," he said. "That was our forethought, making sure they got what they were supposed to be getting."

Detective David Carson of the Wilkes County Sheriff's Office said they believe that Earp had medical problems and was using the drugs to control his own pain. Authorities say they don't believe that he sold any of the drugs.

Carson said that actions by EMS to change procedures were what made it possible to figure out what was happening to the drugs.

"The fact that EMS recognized they had a problem and the fact they took steps, that's largely responsible for us being able to place charges," he said.

Earp was released under a $25,000 secured bond.