A Virginia emergency medical technician who likened Black people to gorillas and claimed to take immense pleasure in “terrorizing” a Black child with a needle has been placed on unpaid leave, CNN reported.
Alex McNabb, who works as a part-time EMT in Patrick County, made the racist statements on a neo-Nazi podcast titled, “The Daily Shoah,” where he’s a frequent co-host. McNabb’s employer, JEB Stuart Volunteer Rescue Squad, confirmed to the network he’d remain suspended while the state’s Department of Health investigates.
On his podcast, Alex McNabb made several anti-Black statements and likened an African-American woman to a gorilla. (Image courtesy of Instagram)
“We’ll cooperate (with the state),” said Wren Williams, JEB Stuart’s lawyer. “I’ve cautioned against firing him outright yet because we don’t want to be sued for wrongful termination.”
HuffPost reported Saturday that the state had launched a formal investigation into McNabb after an anonymous complaint was lodged against him in late November. He was officially suspended Monday, Dec. 10.
McNabb, 35, has insisted his comments are a “work of fiction” and part of an alter ego he uses on the podcast called “Dr. Narcan.” Critics are not buying it, however, and argue the EMT’s racist views make him incapable of rendering aid to vulnerable minority and Jewish patients. The title of the podcast itself mocks the Holocaust, CNN noted.
“This individual should never be involved in patient care at any level,” said Lock Boyce, the board of supervisors’ chairman of Patrick County. “Not as a physician, a nurse, an EMT. Not anywhere.”
On his show, “Dr. Narcan” repeatedly referred to Black patients as “dindus,” a slur that combines “didn’t” and “do” to mock African Americans who say the system treats them unfairly. He allegedly stooped even lower and compared Black folks to animals.
In an Oct. 4 podcast from 2016, first reported by HuffPost, McNabb detailed an emergency call to a local apartment complex in a predominately Black neighborhood that he and other medics dubbed “Ebola Alley.” Under to the guise of Dr. Narcan, he referred to a Black woman as “dinduisha” and likened her to a “shaved” version of famed Cincinnati Zoo gorilla Harambe.
On another occasion, McNabb remarked that “the heat brings out the wild in the dindu,” and added, “as winter approaches, the animals go into hibernation and the ridiculousness of the [911] calls goes down.”
He later opined that, “It’s hard to find a dindu vein anyway, because they’re Black.”
“Dr. Narcan” went on to tell the story of an unruly Black male child who needed his blood drawn, but wouldn’t sit still.
“So, Guess who volunteered to take his blood?” McNabb told his co-hosts, who chuckled in response. “Dr. Narcan enjoyed great, immense satisfaction as he terrorized this youngster with a needle and stabbed him thusly in the arm with a large-gauge IV catheter.”
Vickie Gendraw, pediatric phlebotomy coordinator at Tufts Medical Center, told HuffPost she was “appalled” by McNabb’s story, which he doesn’t label as fact or fiction, and noted that large gauge needles are never used on pediatric patients.
On Twitter, the EMT wrote “that any resemblance to actual persons (mentioned in his podcast) … is purely coincidental” and claimed he’s suffering a “character assassination attempt” by the news media.
The Virginia Health Department said it will investigate to determine whether “any alleged violations of Virginia’s EMS regulations have occurred.” Those regulations explicitly state that “EMS personnel may not discriminate … based on race, gender, religion, age, national origin, medical condition or any other reason.”
So far, Williams said there’s no evidence McNabb mistreated any patients in his care.
