A Utah Nurse's Unjust Arrest Captivated the Country -- Here's the Police Chase That Started It All


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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEeSmhTyM5o

Back in September 2017, a video circulated of Alex Wubbels, a Registered Nurse at Utah State University Hospital, being forcibly arrested for refusing to give police a patient's blood sample. Following the video's release, people across the country were outraged at how the police treated Wubbels, and it soon became a closely followed story for some time.

Now, the event that led to Wubbels' arrest was a high-speed police chase that resulted in a fiery crash, which you can see in the above video from the Utah Highway Patrol. As you can see from the footage, the suspect swerved in front of a semi truck and collided into it, which caused an explosion. The suspect died in the crash, and the truck driver, William Gray, was transported to the local hospital.

Read More: Intense Police Body Camera Footage Shows Las Vegas Cop Shooting Through Own Windshield During High-Speed Chase

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Gray, a reserve police officer for the Rigby, Idaho Police Department, wasn't a suspect himself, but police still demanded that the hospital provide them with a blood sample. When Wubbels refused, police aggressively arrested her and caused an ugly scene. Since Gray wasn't a suspect or even conscious, the hospital rightfully declined to give police a blood sample. Hence the uproar over Wubbels' arrest.

Detective Jeff Payne, who arrested Wubbels, was initially suspended from the blood draw program and placed on administrative leave, before getting fired a month after the body camera footage was released. In November 2018, Payne announced that he planned to sue over his firing from the Salt Lake City police department, claiming he did nothing wrong.

As for Wubbels, she reached a $500,000 settlement with Salt Lake City as well as the Utah State University Hospital.

"We all deserve to know the truth and the truth comes when you see the actual raw footage and that's what happened in my case," said Wubbels back in 2017, according to NPR.

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"No matter how truthful I was in telling my story, it was nothing compared to what people saw and the visceral reaction people experienced when watching the footage of the experience that I went through."

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