Police: woman drives off
with ambulance

FREMONT, Ohio (WUPW) - Carmen Durney, a 33-year-old Fremont woman, allegedly stole an ambulance and took it for a nine-hour joyride over the Christmas holiday weekend, police say.

"I looked out my window and saw an EMS van sitting," said Carol Coffman, who lives on Bloom Road. "There's no way that should sit there for five hours."

Coffman and her neighbors woke up Dec. 28 to the sight of an ambulance stuck in a Fremont field with its lights still flashing.

At first, the residents on the small dead-end street thought the parked ambulance was intentional. They decided for Hoffman to call 9-1-1 and report the unusual sight.

"One gentleman opened up the door and the other one stood to the side with his gun out, like you see on the TV set," Hoffman recounted.

According to police detectives, the whole incident started on Cherry Street hours earlier Saturday evening, Dec. 27. Emergency technicians were on a call and left the rig running. When they came out of the structure, the ambulance was nowhere to be found.

The amulance was reported stolen just after midnight on Dec. 28. Police units combed the area but couldn't locate the EMS van.

Some three miles on the other side of the city, Hoffman heard sirens.

"We had heard sounds, like an ambulance coming down the street," Coffman told FOX Toledo News. "But this is a dead-end and it won't go very far."

Police believe Durney also stole some radios, cell phones, and a medic's jacket. She left something inside the ambulance bay, though - a toy Power Wheel-model Cadillac Escalade.

Detectives told FOX Toledo News that Durney has a history of mental problems and has been fighting bi-polar disorder symptoms for years.

Durney was arraigned in Fremont Municipal Court Friday.