Florida Fire Chief Wanted for Stealing COVID-19 Vaccines Surrendered

Globe Live Media, Thursday, January 28, 2021

A paramedic and fire supervisor from Polk County, Florida (USA), wanted by the police for a theft of vaccines against covid-19, surrendered to the authorities on Wednesday after the arrest of one of his subordinates for the same case.

Anthony Damiano, 55, who has been the captain of a firefighting crew for 14 years is accused of misconduct and petty theft, said the Polk County Sheriff’s Office in central Florida.

Damiano was expected to be arrested upon returning to his home after a trip out of state, but the health worker, who initially claimed to have taken the vaccines to supply his mother, surrendered without resistance at a police station.

Another paramedic related to the case, Joshua Colón, 31, is accused not only of stealing three doses of a covid-19 vaccine, but of filling out the necessary documents to get vaccinated on behalf of other people and of providing false information.

Joshua Colon. 

The Polk sheriff’s office indicated Tuesday that Colón resigned from his post the previous Friday and was arrested on Monday, January 25, but is now free on bail.

Colon was tasked with vaccinating first responders at a Polk fire station and doing the regulatory paperwork to record who was vaccinated and how the vaccines that the state provides free of charge were administered.

Colon told the police that before the vaccines were given, his supervisor “joked” with him about appropriating some doses for his mother and then asked him to report three doses as useless.

When he went to lunch he left all the vaccines in a refrigerator and labeled and when he returned three were no longer there, but he did not inform the authorities.

“Joshua tried to cover up the captain, Joshua set the stage for the vaccines to be stolen,” Sheriff Grady Judd said during a news conference Tuesday. According to Colón, his supervisor threatened to report him if he did not comply with his instructions.

According to the police report, Damiano admitted taking the vaccines and told Colón to report those vaccines as if they had fallen from the fire station desk.

The police indicated that the supervisor’s mother never received the vaccinations.

Damaino was released with the payment of a bond of USD 1,250.

In Florida, only health and first aid personnel, those admitted to nursing homes and those who care for them, as well as those over 65 years old, can be vaccinated for now.

Currently there is a shortage of vaccines that has elderly people restless and worried, because at the same time infections and deaths from covid-19 are increasing.

The governor of Florida, Republican Ron DeSantis, greeted this Wednesday that the Administration of President Joe Biden made a “modest increase” in the supply of vaccines against covid-19 for this state, but asked for more doses and “as quickly as possible”.