After rushing to the scene of a violent car crash involving his daughter this week, a Hurricane man was Tasered and, along with his son, arrested and charged with multiple felonies after they reportedly got into a scuffle with emergency personnel.
Instead of accompanying 16-year-old Kaitlyn Falbo to the hospital, Rudolph V. Falbo II, 40, and his son, Joshua F. Falbo, 18, spent Thursday night at the Western Regional Jail in Barboursville.
Robin Falbo, Kaitlyn Falbo’s mother, said Friday that Kaitlyn’s car was hit on the driver’s side at the intersection of U.S. 60 and Sycamore Road, pinning her inside the car. Her brother Josh was in another car close behind, and saw the wreck, she said.
Josh Falbo immediately called his father, who rushed over from the family’s home, just blocks away on Lake Drive. Unable to get his daughter out of the car, Rudy Falbo comforted her through the window, Robin Falbo said.
"I’m sure his adrenaline was going," Robin Falbo said. "She was crying for her daddy."
According to criminal complaints filed in Putnam County Magistrate Court, paramedics and volunteer firefighters repeatedly told Rudy Falbo to get out of the way.
Hurricane police Patrolmen J.M. Kerr and C.K. Eggleton, also told Rudy Falbo several times to move, the complaint states.
"Kerr [then] pulled Mr. Falbo out of the way by his belt and at that point Mr. Falbo began pulling away and fighting," allegedly assaulting two firefighters and three paramedics in the process, the complaint states.
"[In] the course of Mr. Falbo fighting he was taken to the ground where he resisted arrest and then got back up and was pinned against a fire truck, and Officer Eggleton applied the Taser to Mr. Falco."
Josh Falbo allegedly shoved two firefighters, and threw a punch that missed, according to the complaints.
Eggleton and Putnam County paramedic Cory Champlin were treated at CAMC Teays Valley for hand injuries, the complaint states.
Robin Falbo said that before her daughter knew what was happening, emergency workers had her father on the ground.
Witnesses told her that officers used a Taser to subdue her husband, and that her son began yelling at the officers and trying to move forward through the assembled crowd, she said.
Robin Falbo said she went to the scene as soon as she got home from work, and was blocked from approaching the car by Hurricane police officers.
"Ma’am, leave the scene at this time or you’re going to be arrested," she said they told her. She realized she couldn’t afford to get arrested, because someone had to accompany her daughter to the hospital.
It took rescue workers 30 minutes to cut Kaitlyn Falbo out of her car, according to her mother. She was given X-rays and CAT scans at CAMC General Hospital, and released at 3 a.m. Friday. She was very sore and resting at home later Friday, Robin Falbo said.
Rudy Falbo was charged with three felonies, including obstructing or injuring an emergency medical worker, and four misdemeanors, including obstructing a police officer. Josh Falbo was charged with two felonies, for allegedly obstructing or injuring emergency medical workers.
They were arraigned Friday by Putnam County Magistrate Kylene Dunlap Brown, who set Rudy Falbo’s bail at $10,000 and Josh Falbo’s at $2,500. Both men were released Friday afternoon after bail was posted.
‘It was a melee’
Hurricane Mayor Scott Edwards, who has worked as a paramedic and volunteer firefighter for 22 years but was not involved with Thursday’s wreck, said he has had to physically move distraught loved ones away from crashes hundreds of times over his career.
But this was the first time he knew of a fight ensuing, he said.
"From what I was told, when they pulled this guy away, he came out fighting," Edwards said. "I heard . . . it was a melee."
Any time a Hurricane police officer uses a Taser, the department conducts an investigation into the incident, he said.
From what he has learned so far from eyewitness, including bystanders, Edwards said he was absolutely comfortable with the officer’s decision to deploy the electronic shock device.
"It seems that the police department did what they had to do to protect the patient, because the patient’s well-being was being hampered by her own dad," he said. "Her treatment was being delayed because of his actions."
Mary Falbo, Rudy Falbo’s mother, said her grandson’s girlfriend, who was in the car with him, saw the events unfold.
"[She] told me that Rudy was comforting Kaitlyn, and she was saying, ‘Daddy don’t leave me.’ And they came and shoved him, and told him to move," Mary Falbo said. "From [her] vantage point, it looked like everybody started jumping on my son."
Josh Falbo, a baseball standout who pitched a no-hitter for Hurricane High School’s baseball team in March, is trying to earn a baseball scholarship to college, his grandmother said. She worries that a felony arrest could devastate his chances.
If the situation had been better handled, she said, the arrests could have been avoided.
"All someone had to do was put their arm around [Rudy Falbo], and say, ‘Mr. Falbo, we need you to be over here,’" she said. "They need to be compassionate. Where’s our humanity? Don’t they have children?"
Instead, she said, her granddaughter was distraught at the hospital when her father wasn’t there to comfort her, and her son and grandson spent the night in jail, not knowing whether Kaitlyn Falbo was alive or dead.
