A seemingly drunken neurosurgeon was wrestled into custody by sheriff’s deputies while on his way to the operating room in a San Francisco-area hospital, officials said on Thursday.
Frederico Castro-Moure (45) was suspended from his post as head of neurosurgery at the Alameda County Medical Centre in the city of Oakland pending results of an investigation into the incident, hospital officials said.
The county district attorney’s office was also reviewing the case to determine whether to pursue criminal charges.
Castro-Moure was in the hospital’s surgical suite preparing to do a non-emergency operation on Monday night when he began yelling and cursing at nurses who told him the instruments he wanted were unavailable, according to investigators.
Hospital staff summoned sheriff’s deputies, who arrived to find Castro-Moure “loud, boisterous and agitated”, lieutenant William Eskridge told Agence France-Presse.
Castro-Moure waved a fist at a deputy and refused to calm down, according to Eskridge. Deputies wrestled the doctor to the floor and smelled alcohol on his breath, the lieutenant said.
Castro-Moure denied being intoxicated, telling police he only had a glass of wine with dinner, according to Eskridge.
The doctor was arrested on suspicion of being publicly inebriated and interfering with a police officer. — AFP