ST. LOUIS (AP) — A St. Louis police officer has been charged with forgery after authorities say he presented a fake doctor’s note indicating he had to quarantine for two weeks.
Officer Ronald Vaughan, 34, emailed a workers compensation specialist at the police department on Dec. 1, saying he had to quarantine until Dec. 14, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Monday. When informed he had to have a doctor’s note, authorities said, Vaughn sent one within minutes purported to be from Metro Cardiovascular. But an investigator said the note appeared doctored, with some words “blocked out in white, as if they had been pasted over an old note.”
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The investigator said he contacted the doctor and his staff, who said they had not provided the note to Vaughan.
Vaughan was charged Thursday. No attorney was listed for him as of Monday morning in online court records.
Vaughan has been at the center of other cases that have drawn public attention, including the 2015 fatal shooting of 18-year-old Mansur Ball-Bey of St. Louis. Vaughan and another officer say they fired on Ball-Bey after he brandished a gun, but the teen’s family contends he was shot in the back as he ran.
In 2013, prosecutors dropped a drug possession charge against a man after a video of the arrest raised questions about whether Vaughan had planting evidence. A federal jury later found in favor of Vaughan and other officers in the case.