A man urinated from a fourth-floor balcony in Shoreditch on to a paramedic who was treating a victim of assault down below.

Andrew Whitehead, 22, from Shoreditch, relieved himself from the balcony of an address on Shoreditch High Street on to Paramedic Lorna McIlwaine, the patient she was treating and a police officer at around 1am on Saturday 31 January.

Ms McIlwaine, 30, said that she had been called to treat a man who had suffered a broken nose and black eye in an unprovoked attack in a shop.

“I was walking with him to my response car with a police officer when, without any warning, I felt a splash. I didn’t know what it was at first but it became very clear it was a bodily fluid.

“I looked up and there was a man standing there, exposing himself to the whole street, laughing.”

She added that she had been physically assaulted before but what made this incident so different was that it felt “so personal.”

“What makes this even more frustrating is that I needed to return to my station to change my uniform and fill in my report, which prevented me from responding to patients.”

Mr Whitehead was arrested by police and later charged. He was fined £250 and sentenced to 300 hours community service at Thames Magistrates’ Court on 20 February.

London Ambulances Service’s Deputy Director of Operations Katy Millard said: “To treat our ambulance crews in such a demeaning and humiliating way is completely unacceptable. Our paramedics are only trying to care for patients in their time of need.

The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards Show all 6 1 /6 The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards Linda Dixon, 60, leads research into African swine fever at the Pirbright Institute in Surrey "For more than 25 years I've been trying to develop a vaccine for the African swine fever virus, which causes death in domestic pigs, and has symptoms quite like Ebola. It came from East Africa in the 1920s and was transmitted to Georgia in 2007 via food from shipping that was fed to pigs. It has now spread to neighbouring countries and this year entered the EU via Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It's difficult to eliminate because it also infects wild boar, which populate large parts of Europe." David Vintiner The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards Simon Woodmore, 45, is a paramedic and operations officer for London Ambulance Service's Hazardous Area Response Team (Hart) "I have a helmet for all occasions – five in all – as well as an array of outfits, including breathing apparatus and gas-tight suits, respirators and chemical protective suits. My job is to put paramedics where historically they could not have worked. We were born out of the Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995, and have been running as Hart since 2006. There are 94 of us in London dealing with chemical, biological and radiological incidents, as well as building collapses and floods." David Vintiner The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards Simon Woodmore, paramedic and operations officer "We've always dealt with contagious diseases and work with the Royal Free Hospital London high-level isolation unit to transfer confirmed cases, which fortunately is rare. A lot of it is communicating with the patient in a caring and compassionate way, which can be difficult when you're in full gear. There is an increased awareness of Ebola, but it's about reinforcing the processes we already have in place. Any personal risk is mitigated by our training and equipment." David Vintiner The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards Benjamin Black, 33, is a specialist registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) "In June I travelled to Sierra Leone, where one in 21 women of reproductive age dies in childbirth. This was my first mission, and the reason I got into medicine. I had my eyes wide open to Ebola; though it was still in its early days and concentrated across the border in Guinea, within days I had my first suspected Ebola cases in maternity. It was happening." David Vintiner The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards Benjamin Black, Médecins Sans Frontières "You need a healthy amount of fear to be safe, as well as protocol and organisational back-up. The greatest fear then is how long you can keep getting it right. There is also a huge psychological element. I checked my temperature daily, but in a hot, humid country there's a constant feverish feeling anyway. We had scares and one of our national nurses was infected, probably in the community. He sadly died and it had a huge impact on the team." David Vintiner The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards Lisa Jameson, 29, is a National Institute for Health Research doctoral research fellow for Public Health England, based at the Porton Down facility in Wiltshire. She specialises in emerging viruses "I was in the field watching patients come into the isolation centre next to us, often with their families. Sometimes they'd be walking and talkative, then die that night. It was tough but we were so busy, and being there made it feel like we were making a difference. When I got home after a month, I felt a sense of guilt that I was able to walk away. I'll almost certainly be going back." David Vintiner

“Medics are under a great deal of pressure. It is completely unacceptable that they should also face the risk of this treatment or worse when they go to assist members of the public.”