A former Orlando firefighter and Pulse massacre first-responder has been arrested for recording City Commissioner Regina Hill during a medical call in August 2017, court records show.
The ex-firefighter, 39-year-old Joshua Granada of Altamonte Springs, was booked into the Orange County Jail about 1 p.m. Wednesday, according to jail records. He has since been released.
“I’ll leave it up to the justice system to take its course,” Hill said after Granada’s arrest. “It’s nothing I want to celebrate.”
An attorney for Granada didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.
Granada has been charged with two counts: interception of wire or oral communications and willful disclosure of an unlawful interception of communications, both third-degree felonies.
Granada’s crew was called to a DoubleTree by Hilton hotel about 4 p.m. Aug. 27, 2017. There, Granada said he encountered Hill and “felt threatened” by her behavior, so he began audio-recording her. He said he stopped when he found out who she was.
Granada claimed Hill was behaving belligerently, while Hill accused the firefighter of violating her privacy and the public trust.
Granada was fired after the incident. The Fire Department in a termination letter said Granada violated agency rules and state law by recording a patient during treatment and later playing the recording at the dining room table of his fire station.
Granada and his attorney at the time claimed that he had found her hotel room littered with liquor bottles and reeking of cigarettes, and that Hill had berated and cursed at him.
Hill responded that she was being “slandered and defamed.”
“It’s not about me,” she told reporters in December 2017. “I didn’t break a law. Fireman Josh Granada broke the law.”
Granada and the Orlando firefighters’ union, meanwhile, argued that he was wrongfully fired. In a news conference, he claimed he was “targeted” by the Fire Department for breaking protocol to save lives during the massacre at Pulse nightclub.
Both Granada and Hill said they were suffering emotionally at the time of their encounter: Granada, from post-traumatic stress related to the massacre, and Hill, because the day after the Aug. 27 incident marked two years after the death of her daughter.
Granada filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against the city in March, records show, claiming his superiors ignored his requests for treatment and violated the his rights under the state’s Whistle Blower’s Act by firing him. The suit is still pending.
The city has denied Granada’s allegations.
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