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Surgeon to face hearing

State medical board to consider complaints stemming from local doctor's arrest at party.

By JIM HALL

Date published: 7/28/2006

A Fredericksburg surgeon has been summoned to appear before a committee of the Virginia Board of Medicine on charges that he abused alcohol.

Dr. R. Shane Palmer faces disciplinary action for incidents that are alleged to have occurred in 2004, including threatening to retaliate against a Stafford County deputy who arrested him on charges of public intoxication.

Palmer said yesterday that he regrets what happened, that he said things in anger and has since apologized for them.

"I am not an impaired physician," he added.

The alleged threat occurred in September 2004, while the 38-year-old Palmer was being booked into the Rappahannock Regional Jail. Palmer is alleged to have told the arresting officer that he hoped the officer would someday need care at the emergency room, so he could "fumble" with his chest tube, according to the police report written at the time.

"I'll get you back," Palmer said, according to a second officer's report.

In a letter to the Mary Washington Hospital administration and the Virginia Board of Medicine, Stafford Sheriff Charles E. Jett called Palmer's threats "disgusting." Jett asked that Palmer be barred from ever treating a Sheriff's Office employee.

The incident began about 3 a.m. on a Saturday night, Labor Day weekend in 2004, when Stafford deputies responded to complaints of loud music coming from a party at Palmer's house in southern Stafford.

The deputies spoke with Palmer about the noise. In their reports, they described him as angry, aggressive and intoxicated. He was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice, resisting arrest, public intoxication and noise ordinance violation.

The deputies took Palmer and one other man from the party to the regional jail.

In his report about the incident, deputy Alex Smith said Palmer told him that there would be a day when the deputy would arrive at the emergency room with a gunshot wound to the chest.

When that happened, Smith wrote, Palmer said he would "fumble" with his chest tube.

"Palmer then began to smile after his threatening comment and began to walk away from me yelling," Smith wrote.

Palmer's case reached trial one year later, in September 2005, in Stafford Circuit Court. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest. The other charges were dropped.

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Date published: 7/28/2006