The official affidavit of his arrest, obtained and reviewed by PEOPLE, said he conducted himself unlawfully during his 911 call “by deception and with intent to avoid payment.” The bill was $63.77.
Investigators concluded that the emergency was all a ruse to avoid paying the tab. Officers handcuffed Rasheed and drove him directly to the Douglas County Jail. He was charged with theft of services and making an unlawful 911 call, and he was booked into the Douglas County Jail, WSB-TV said.
Rasheed is now free on his bond of $4,500, according to the local Douglas County Sentinel.
The county where a 911 call can cost $100
Even if his plan had worked, Rasheed had chosen an unforgiving place to fake a crisis. According to an earlier WSB-TV report, on June 1, 2026, Douglas County started charging a new $100 fee when someone is treated by its Fire/EMS crew but refuses to be taken to a hospital. (There’s an exception, however, for patients who fall and need help up, people who are enrolled in the mobile health program, and anyone referred by a telehealth provider.)
Speaking with the station, Miles Allen, Douglas County Fire/EMS Chief, said: “You call us for a reason, and it has to be more than just checking your blood pressure, checking your blood sugar.”
The county says the charge was put in place to ensure that ambulances are strictly called during real emergencies, as its EMS department responded to about 5,600 calls last year where the patients received care but refused a trip to the hospital. Those calls made up about 33% of the department’s total calls for the year.
“People call a lot for non-emergency needs,” said Stacie Farmer, Deputy Chief of EMS Operations told WSB-TV, describing residents who use 911 as “a point of access to get into the health care system.”
Routine runs, Allen and Farmer say, drain supplies and pull staff off the road. As Allen put it: “It actually takes us away from real emergencies.”
What to do when you can’t pay your tab
Police records do not explicitly state whether Rasheed knew about the county’s $100 EMS fee or not. They do, however, suggest a blind panic and desperation, as the arrest affidavit stated that he contacted emergency services “after realizing he couldn’t pay.”
This points to a possible last-minute scheme to avoid the immediate embarrassment or legal trouble of his $63.77 bill, rather than an elaborate plan in which he had weighed county EMS fees beforehand.
