A 34-year-old Beaumont woman has been sentenced to six years in prison after she punched a paramedic who was treating her inside a local hospital earlier this year. Attaree Shanta Milton pleaded guilty to the felony assault, closing out a case that stemmed from a February visit to the emergency room while she was reportedly under the influence of an unknown substance.
According to a probable cause affidavit from Magistrate Marc DeRouen, Milton was brought to CHRISTUS Hospital St. Elizabeth on February 21 while highly intoxicated, and while a Beaumont Fire-Rescue paramedic was treating her, she struck the paramedic with a closed fist. The case was first reported by 12News, which detailed the circumstances behind the felony charge and Milton's ultimate plea deal in Jefferson County Criminal District Court.
Under Texas Penal Code § 22.01, simple assault causing bodily injury is ordinarily just a Class A misdemeanor. But state law elevates the charge to a third-degree felony, punishable by two to 10 years in prison and fines up to $10,000, when the victim is emergency medical personnel or another public servant performing official duties, according to FindLaw. That enhancement is what turned Milton's hospital outburst into a felony case rather than a misdemeanor.
A Plea Deal That Sidestepped a Possible Life Sentence
During court proceedings, Judge John Stevens noted that Milton's plea agreement let her avoid a jury trial — one where her three prior felony convictions would have exposed her to a habitual offender enhancement carrying 25 years to life in prison, the station's report noted. Those priors included two convictions for assault on a public servant in Galveston County in 2016 and one conviction for evading arrest with a motor vehicle in Harris County in 2019, per the same account.
Milton's record also includes a 2018 incident in Baytown, where she led police on a high-speed vehicle pursuit, threw her clothing out the car window, and fled naked into a field, according to KBMT. That arrest also triggered a parole violation tied to a previous peace officer assault conviction out of Austin.
Beaumont's Only 9-1-1 EMS Provider
The paramedic assaulted at CHRISTUS St. Elizabeth works for Beaumont Fire-Rescue, which serves as the city's sole 9-1-1 emergency medical services provider, deploying both Advanced Life Support and Basic Life Support units across 12 station districts, according to the City of Beaumont. CHRISTUS St. Elizabeth itself is a 349-bed acute care facility on Calder Street that runs the region's primary emergency department and trauma services for Southeast Texas, per the American Hospital Directory.
Beaumont's paramedics have been navigating their own employment fight in recent years. In January 2025, a Texas court ruled that Beaumont EMS personnel must be classified as civil service employees rather than civilians, granting them the same pay, benefits, and statutory protections as city firefighters, following a lawsuit over the fire department's 2021 absorption of EMS operations, as reported by 12News.
A National Pattern of Violence Against EMS Workers
Milton's case fits into a much larger picture of violence facing first responders and hospital staff nationwide. Research published in Prehospital and Disaster Medicine found that U.S. EMS personnel experience violence-related occupational injury rates roughly 22 times higher than the average for all American workers, with 65% of surveyed EMS clinicians reporting physical attacks at some point in their careers.
Federal labor data reinforces the trend at a broader scale. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that healthcare and social assistance workers accounted for 72.8% of all nonfatal workplace violence injuries requiring time off in private U.S. industry during 2021–2022, facing an annualized rate of 14.2 cases per 10,000 full-time workers. Milton's six-year sentence, handed down under a Texas law built specifically to punish assaults on emergency workers, arrives against that backdrop of a profession where violent encounters have become disturbingly routine.
