Denied cigarettes, woman allegedly punches nurse

A Bucksport woman who was arrested for punching a nurse who was trying to treat her Tuesday refused to sign the summons with her real name. Instead she signed as Madam Cynthia.

Rinska West, 36, apparently became angry at staff at St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor early Tuesday morning when they refused to let her smoke a cigarette. West refused their offers of a nicotine patch or nicotine chewing gum. The nurse told Bangor police Officer Brent Beaulieu that they wanted to keep West in the hospital until the affects of her intoxication wore off.

After she was told she had to stay on the stretcher, West punched a nurse in the back.

West denied striking the nurse and even refused to identify herself to Beaulieu, even though the officer had gotten her name from the hospital and from papers and medication bottles in her purse. Instead, West claimed she was Madam Cynthia, although she later changed that to Cindy Williams.

She even told the officer she was going to sign the summons for assault using Madam Cynthia and despite two warnings from Beaulieu not to do so, she did.

Beaulieu charged West with assault, aggravated forgery and failure to give correct name.

Bangor police on Tuesday charged a 21-year-old Kenduskeag woman with theft and forgery after she tried to cash a check from her parents checking account without their permission.

Sarah Stetson cashed two of her parents checks days earlier at the Leadbetters Mini Stop on Ohio and Hammond streets in Bangor, but after that a store employee was in contact with the parents who said their daughter didn’t have permission to cash the checks.

Arriving at the convenience store at about 1 p.m., Officer Butch Moor found Stetson inside a taxicab, urging the cabdriver to leave quickly. Stetson claimed she had permission to cash the check, but asked to produce the check, she couldn’t find it, according to the police report.

She was taken to the Bangor Police Department where later she pulled the $115 check from her pocket and placed it on a table.

– Compiled by NEWS reporter Doug Kesseli