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A San Mateo County paramedic, already on trial for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman while she was strapped into an ambulance, is now accused in a civil suit of committing the same act of forced oral copulation on a previous victim, also in her 80s.
The suit against American Medical Response West says an emergency medical technician/paramedic it employed, Miguel Angel Nieblas Ontiveros, sexually assaulted a Pacifica woman who had fallen in her home after suffering a possible stroke on May 21, 2022. While being transported to Mills Peninsula Hospital, the victim, identified as Jane Doe NM, was immobile in the ambulance when Ontiveros assaulted her, the suit says.
“Both situations are absolutely tragic, and there are a lot of similarities,” said attorney Anne Marie Murphy of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, who filed the complaint Thursday in San Mateo County Superior Court. “My client in the May assault had tried to fight off the paramedic and was adamant that he had tried to put his penis in her mouth. Nobody believed her, and there was no DNA evidence or criminal prosecution until the second assault by Miguel Ontiveros.”
The suit lists as defendants AMR West, a California corporation, and American Medical Response, the nationwide emergency transportation company incorporated in Delaware.
The complaint follows a suit in which Murphy sued AMR, which is contracted by San Mateo County, for a previous incident alleging that an 82-year-old woman was assaulted by Ontiveros. On Thursday, Murphy told The Chronicle that AMR probably knew about the previous assault accusation against Ontiveros and continued to employ him, which makes it a more serious charge.
She also said a toxic work environment was tolerated at AMR in San Mateo County and that complaints against Ontiveros and other emergency employees were ignored by management.
Murphy said her pretrial investigation has involved several former AMR employees who described a “boys gone wild atmosphere at AMR San Mateo,” she said. “It was high school with lights and sirens, including drug and alcohol abuse use while at work.”
The first suit was filed in March based on an alleged incident that occurred in December 2022. It asserts that a petite woman, identified as Jane Doe, was strapped to a gurney and immobilized by a cervical neck brace when attendant Oliver, described as weighing 250 pounds, forced himself on her for oral copulation. That suit alleges that AMR had hired and retained Ontiveros despite knowledge that he had a previous charge of felony grand theft while employed by the Fire Department in South San Francisco.
In bringing criminal charges against Ontiveros, the district attorney revealed that Ontiveros had been accused of a similar assault seven months earlier. Criminal charges for the earlier alleged assault were later brought on behalf of the victim who is now represented by Murphy.
Ontiveros is in San Mateo County jail awaiting trial and faces life in prison if convicted of the charges.
In Thursday’s civil suit, Murphy is seeking unspecified damages against AMR for its role in allowing an alleged sexual predator to be employed as a paramedic. Jane Doe NM was 80 at the time of the alleged assault.
“Her entire life trajectory changed at the time of the assault,” Murphy said. “After the assault she was so depressed that she became despondent. She stopped bathing and taking care of herself and moved into a separate bedroom from her significant other of 40 years.”
She has since moved out of her own home and in with her daughter. She reported the crime the day it happened and she was interviewed by police, but the investigation took months, Murphy said. When she saw in news coverage that Ontiveros had been arrested, based on DNA evidence recovered from the first alleged victim, Jane Doe NM finally came forward and contacted Murphy’s firm.
“I do think there are many more victims,” Murphy said. “These are just the two that we know of.”
A spokesperson for AMR said the company does not comment on ongoing or pending litigation. It noted that Ontiveros had been terminated by AMR immediately upon his arrest, and that AMR is cooperating with law enforcement and the prosecution of the criminal case.
Reach Sam Whiting: [email protected]
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