A man accused of sexually assaulting teenaged girls can no longer be a paramedic but his criminal past has some wondering how he got the job in the first place.

KGW file photo

An American Medical Response ambulance.

It basically came down to two reasons: For one, at the time, the Washington State Department of Health was not required to do a background check. Still, American Medical Response, the ambulance company that hired the convicted felon claims it did do a background check on him, and he passed.

Shane Shults stands accused of sexually assaulting at least five girls between the ages of 13 and 16, inside his home in Northeast Vancouver between 1998 and 2006, according to police.

He was arrested last May but until then, he had been working as a paramedic for AMR.

Investigators believe Shults was a calculated predator. Legal documents obtained by KGW Northwest Newschannel 8 revealed that police believe Shults injected his young victims with an unknown substance and then assaulted them. And this wasn’t his first arrest.

Many of his friends still stood behind him.

“I would never think twice letting my 8-year-old go down there and play,” said Gail Taylor, Shults’ neighbor.

In May of 1987, Shults was convicted of two counts of attempted indecent liberties with a minor, a Class A felony. This came as a shock to some neighbors, especially since he had been working as a paramedic for at least the last five years.

“Obviously they didn't do a background check on it and that's kind of scary,” said Susan Robins, also a neighbor.

Records show that the Washington State Department of Health first certified Shults as a medic back in 1998. The dept. said he answered “no” when asked if he’d been convicted of a sex offense.

And no background check was conducted because the state didn’t start doing them on initial applicants until 2002, authorities said.

As for AMR, company officials said Shults passed an extensive criminal background check but the company would not comment any further, except to say that the case was under investigation and Shults no longer works for AMR.

Because Shults lied about his criminal history, the state Wednesday revoked his paramedic certification.

Washington law does not require him to register as a sex offender because his conviction happened more than ten years ago. Meantime, Shults was still awaiting trail on the latest sex assault charges that were filed last May.

(KGW reporters Keely Chalmers and Teresa Bell also contributed to this article.)