HELL’S KITCHEN — A surgeon upset about a ticket two police officers were writing her for double-parking hit one of the officers with her car as she tried to drive away, police said.
Rachel Wellner, an assistant clinical professor of surgery at the Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care in The Bronx, was double-parked at West 55th Street and Eighth Avenue shortly before 11:30 a.m. Thursday when two officers started to write up a summons, the NYPD said.
Wellner, 40, who lives in Hell's Kitchen, saw the officers writing the summons and became “irate,” screaming and cursing at them, a police spokeswoman said.
She got back into her car and drove off, but as she left the spot where her car was parked, the vehicle hit one of the officers in the shin, police said.
News outlets reported her car door, which she hadn’t closed, hit the officer as she accelerated.
Wellner made it to West 53rd Street between Ninth and 10th avenues, where officers from the NYPD warrant squad stopped her car, police said.
She was arrested and charged with resisting arrest, leaving the scene of an accident, causing an accident, reckless endangerment, obstructing governmental administration and disorderly conduct, police said.
The officer hit by Wellner’s car was taken to the Weill Cornell Medical Center, where he was listed in stable condition as of Friday morning, police said.
After her arrest, Wellner told the Daily News she tried to drive away because one of the police officers used excessive force.
“I ran away because he held my arm and almost took it out of my socket. That’s why I ran away,” she said. “Because a policeman almost pulled my arm out of my socket."
In addition to her position at Montefiore, Wellner is the director of breast services at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, according to her website.
An employee working at Wellner’s office in The Bronx declined to comment Friday morning.
