An eastern Kentucky ambulance driver says he was falsely imprisoned when a sheriff’s deputy who owns a rival ambulance company pulled him over last week.

Jason Crigger, a licensed EMT employed by Arrow-Med Ambulance, alleges in a lawsuit he was detained without legal justification for five minutes by Sheriff’s Deputy Darrell "Steve" McIntosh, who owns McIntosh Ambulance.

McIntosh “activated his emergency lights and siren” and pulled over the ambulance with a dialysis patient inside and “proceeded to verbally harass [Crigger] over a private civil allegation,” the lawsuit says, alleging an illegal misuse of authority.

It’s the latest escalation in a legal saga between the two ambulance companies, which have pending lawsuits against each other.

Last year, McIntosh filed a federal lawsuit claiming Arrow-Med is overbilling the government and giving unnecessary rides. The company denies it and claims in a lawsuit filed in state court McIntosh is misusing his role as a sheriff’s deputy to snatch business.

Ned Pillersdorf, Crigger’s attorney, says the stop should be considered independent of the backstory.

“It’s a pretty flagrant civil rights violation,” Pillersdorf says. “You’re not allowed to use your official position to detain people and argue with them about a civil suit, which is what happened.”

Crigger is seeking damages, though he says it's not about the money, and is asking a Kentucky circuit court judge to issue an injunction barring McIntosh from taking similar actions in the future.

“He’s a bully and I hate bullies,” Crigger says. “I’ve been poor all my life, and I’ll probably be poor for the foreseeable future. I just want him to leave me and my guys alone and let us work. We don’t do this for the money, we do this to help people and now we have to worry about rogue deputy sheriffs pulling us over and harassing us.”

Crigger says he earns $9.50 an hour and suspects that McIntosh wanted to provoke a physical confrontation that would justify an arrest. He says the patient he was driving was drained from a dialysis treatment and inconvenienced on their way home.

“He’s been following us around for months in his little police car," Crigger says. “He didn't even pretend to have a reason [for the stop], that’s how arrogant he is. He stuck his big old fat head in my personal space trying to provoke a fight. As soon as I asked him why I was being detained his eyes got big and he turned heel and got out of there.”

One of Crigger's colleagues recorded footage of the stop and shared it with WYMT-TV. The ambulance driver says more footage may surface, as it happened along a busy street.

David Drake, 56, says he was the patient in the ambulance and worries a similar experience would be traumatic for others who regularly use the ambulance service. He says he heard part of the conversation between Crigger and McIntosh and did not hear a reasonable explanation for the stop.

“We have a fight on our hands just to stay alive without having to deal with issues like this. It's more stressful,” says Drake, who ran a computer store before suffering renal failure. “Whenever I come off of dialysis after four hours of having my blood cleaned, I want to lay down and rest. It was not only them he was affecting, it was me.”

At first, Drake says, he didn’t know what was happening. And as the stop unfolded he became increasingly uneasy.

“That kind of a thing got me scared a little bit. A police officer out of the blue pulling another emergency vehicle over. It was kind of unnerving to me,” Drake says, recounting the officer asking whether a patient was in the back.

“He intimidated me too in the process, whether he meant to or not,” the patient says. “He really dumped some anxiety on me. I was strapped down in the back. I can’t run, I can just pray to God he won’t go psycho.”

Arrow-Med owner Jay Arrowood says he feels McIntosh – who is also a city councilman in Jackson, Kentucky – is trying to put him out of business, and says he's recorded conduct of the rival company to expose the hypocrisy of fraud allegations against him.

Scott White, an attorney for Arrow-Med, says the company intends to file a federal lawsuit against McIntosh, using videos and other evidence it collected, when it defeats the one he filed against the company. False Claims Act lawsuits entitle plaintiffs alleging fraud to a share of funds recouped by the federal government.

McIntosh declined to comment through an employee of his ambulance company, who said he had not been served a copy of Crigger's lawsuit. His attorney in the federal case, Nick Wallingford, says he’s not representing him in the case and could not comment on it.

Jonathan Shaw, the attorney who will defend McIntosh against Crigger's lawsuit, was unable to speak specifically about the incident, citing its recency, but said, “I’m sure there is more to the story.”

Breathitt County Sheriff Ray Clemons says McIntosh is not paid for his work as a sheriff’s deputy in the rural county, which has just one paid sheriff’s deputy and four volunteer deputies who are given a police vehicle and called when needed.

Clemons tells U.S. News he asked McIntosh why he pulled over the ambulance, but can’t speak to what exactly happened.

“I asked him and he say they made some kind of allegations at him or something or other, stuck their fingers up at him or something, that’s pretty much what he said,” Clemons says.

The sheriff says he hasn’t reviewed the lawsuit and can’t comment further.

Crigger says McIntosh is not telling the truth if he’s claiming he was given the middle finger before the roadside stop.

“If that actually happened you would think he’d write me up,” Crigger says. “I suppose that Deputy McIntosh didn’t think anything would be said about him pulling us over because of who 'big Steve' is, but he was wrong and he pulled over the wrong feller.”

Clemons says McIntosh’s future with the department will be discussed at a Friday meeting.

The sheriff would not confirm or deny that McIntosh is both his nephew and landlord, saying, “I ain’t going to comment no more” before ignoring several calls to his cellphone.