Ambulance Stolen, Taken for Joy Ride

A team of paramedics got a shock early this morning when they walked out of an emergency room in Prince George's County to find their ambulance missing.

Homeland security officials throughout the Washington region had been alerted to the theft by the time police pulled the ambulance over an hour later in Temple Hills and learned it had merely been taken for a joy ride.

"Because of the threat of terrorism, we take missing emergency vehicles very seriously," said Dan Stevens, chief of the Waldorf Volunteer Fire Department, which uses the vehicle. "They can get access to places other vehicles could not."

At the time it was stolen, the ambulance was in use by Charles County paramedics, Stevens said. The paramedics were inside Southern Maryland Hospital Center in Clinton dropping off an elderly woman complaining of a spider bite when the vehicle was taken, he said.

A Prince George's patrol officer spotted the ambulance about an hour later. The man behind the wheel, Robert G. Logan, 51, of 10000 block of Roland Lane in Fort Washington, was arrested and charged with felony theft. He had driven the vehicle past Andrews Air Force Base and inside the Capitol Beltway.

Logan was being held at the county jail. He was already scheduled to appear in court next month on charges of assaulting a police officer, indecent exposure, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

Stevens said the ambulance was not damaged. It was inspected and placed back in service this afternoon, he said.