Video dooms cop who arrested nurse for not letting him take patient’s blood

A Utah nurse who was roughed up and arrested on July 26 by a Salt Lake City cop because she told the officer that he needed a warrant to draw blood from an unconscious patient has settled for a $500,000 payout.

Body cam footage from the scene shows University Hospital nurse Alex Wubbels calmly telling the officer, who was trained for the task of blood withdrawal, that he cannot take a blood sample because the patient, who was involved in a vehicle crash, had neither been arrested nor gave consent. Then the cop lunges and grabs the nurse as she was fearfully backing away. He rushes her outside the hospital, and handcuffs her. All the while, she's screaming that there's no reason for her detainment.

"Somebody help!"

"We're done!" Salt Lake City Detective Jeff Payne repeatedly says.

Wubbels told a news conference Tuesday that the footage, which went viral, made her case.

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. 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.

Charges were never filed against the nurse, who was detained in a police vehicle for 20 minutes.

The $500,000 settlement is to be paid jointly by Salt Lake City and University Hospital. A hospital officer on the scene told the nurse that she would be obstructing justice if she interfered with Payne's investigation.

Payne was fired from his post on October 10, and another officer involved was demoted, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Both officers are challenging their punishment.

The patient at the center of the dispute was a truck driver from Idaho named William Gray, who died last month. A man fleeing police crashed into the semi that Gray was driving on July 26, leaving him severely burned.

The nurse said she would donate some of the money from the settlement to the Utah Nurses Association and would also financially back people in their bid to obtain body cam footage of police incidents.