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East Bay Doctor Suspected Of Rape Eludes Police

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East Bay Doctor Suspected Of Rape Eludes Police

Physician Allegedly Took Nude Photos Of Patients

DUBLIN (CBS 5 / BCN / AP) ― Police are searching for a doctor who is accused of secretly taking hundreds of photographs of unconscious naked men in his medical office, and sexually assaulting at least one of them, a police sergeant said.

Tony G. Shiu, a private Dublin general internal medicine doctor, is suspected of drugging two men and sodomizing at least one of them in his home in August, investigator Sgt. Herb Walters said.

Detectives searching Shiu's home with a warrant later found some 450 digital photographs of 19 naked men in medical settings who were unconscious and unaware they were being photographed, Walters said.

A $1 million arrest warrant was approved on Oct. 5, and Walters said authorities haven't seen a sign of Shiu in Dublin since the doctor found out he was a wanted man.

"He's hiding," Walters said. "I've tried contacting him on his cell phone, but it just goes to voicemail."

"I let his attorney know, to make it easier for him, we could arrange for him to just turn himself in," Walters said.

More than a month has passed with no word from either of them, he said. Police don't know where Shiu is, but they know he's not in Dublin, Walters said.

The state medical board is also investigating the accusations against Shiu, according to Walters.

The physician license database online maintained by the state showed Shiu's license as current and noted that it "meets requirements for the practice of medicine in California." According to the database, his license was originally issued in November 1995 and is scheduled to expire on June 30, 2007. Shiu graduated in 1994 from the UC Davis School of Medicine and served his residency at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, according to public records. No prior disciplinary actions have been recorded against him.

Dublin authorities began investigating Shiu after reports on Aug. 19 from two men who claimed they began a night out at Shiu's Dublin residence on Aug. 18, but woke up later with no recollection of the night before. Walters said that despite each man drinking a "small" amount of alcohol at Shiu's Dublin home, neither could remember a night on the town that included visits to Oakland and Emeryville.

One of the men told police he was slipping in and out of consciousness when he realized he was being fondled, so he left. His friend spent the night.

Both men compared notes after their night with Shiu, Walters said, and decided to contact police.

At the request of a police detective, both men were examined at a hospital for evidence of sexual assault. Initial medical reports showed that they both had benzodiazepine tranquilizers -- a variation of the "date rape" drug -- in their blood and that one of the men had been sodomized, he said.

The investigation of the alleged rape led officers to the digital pictures showing surreptitiously photographed undressed adult men in Shiu's private practice office as well as in an urgent care setting.

Walters said Shiu is a former on-call doctor at a Livermore ValleyCare clinic and runs his private practice out of Dublin.

ValleyCare Health System officials did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Walters said that the hospital opted not to renew Shiu's contract earlier this year and that he no longer works for ValleyCare.

The Dublin medical office is believed to be rented and shared with a female doctor, but they're not in joint practice, Walters said. "She had no clue what was going on," he said.

That doctor told CBS 5 that Shiu has not worked at the clinic since September.

Shiu is facing charges stemming from the Aug. 18 incident, including sodomy and sexual penetration by which the victim can't resist because of ingesting an intoxicating substance such as drugs, Walters said.

The images found in Shiu's home, Walters said, each carry a charge of using a concealed recording device to capture an identifiable person for sexual purposes.

Some of the photographs, cropped portions of which were released by Dublin police to CBS 5, show men in various states of undress with tubes inserted intravenously into their arms. Other photos allegedly show Shiu performing sex acts with men who appear to be patients.

"One victim actually went in because he had symptoms of a flu," Walters said. "Dr. Shiu says, 'Come on in, I'll give you some fluids to try to get the flu out of you.' And that's the only reason why he went in there."

The rooms seen in the photos appear to match the two facilities where the doctor worked, said Walters.

No other victims have come forward, Walters said, and only two men in the photographs have been identified. All of his victims appear to be adult men, he said.

"You can imagine how shocked they were when we showed them naked pictures of themselves," Walters said.

Anyone with information on Shiu's whereabouts should contact Dublin police at (925) 833-6682.

(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Bay City News and The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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