Watch: Baltimore Hospital Staff Leave Gown-Wearing Patient In Freezing Cold Outdoors

A Baltimore hospital launched an investigation Wednesday after a shocking video showed a woman being left by the hospital staff on the road during soaring temperatures.

A series of videos were posted to Facebook by Imamu Baraka, who is described as a mental health counselor in an online professional profile. The videos soon went viral, forcing the hospital to launch an investigation into the incident. In one of the videos, Baraka said the staff at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) Midtown Campus left a woman, only in her hospital gown, near a bus stop Tuesday night when the weather was about 30-40 degrees Fahrenheit. They also packed all her belongings in a bag and left it on the footpath.

The clip showed four security guards, one rolling a wheelchair, walking back into the hospital after leaving the woman on the footpath.

In the video, Baraka can be seen confronting the guards, asking them: “Y'all are just going to leave this lady out here with no clothes?” He adds that the temperature was almost 30 degrees outside.

One of the guards eventually responds: “Due to the circumstances of what happened.”

“Are you OK? Are you unable to speak? Are you okay? Do you need me to call the police?” Baraka is heard asking the woman in the video.

The woman appeared to have a wound on her forehead and seemed to say at one point: “Please help me!”

“This woman was placed in the city of Baltimore, in the dead of night, in the cold, vulnerable, exposed,” he told CBS affiliate WJZ-TV. “She lets out this kind of cry. I felt that. I’m like, ‘come on, let’s go over here. Let’s sit down.’ And, then, she begins to stumble, and I’m like this is going to get bad really fast.”

In another video, Baraka said he called 911 and watched paramedics take the woman back inside the hospital.

The University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) released a statement following the incident, which read:

“We share the shock and disappointment of many who have viewed the video showing the discharge of a patient from the Emergency Department of UMMC Midtown the night of January 9. This unfortunate event is not representative of our patient-centered mission."

“While there are many circumstances of this patient’s case that we cannot address publicly, in the end, we clearly failed to fulfill our mission with this patient, no matter the circumstances of her case or the quality of the clinical care we provided in the hospital (which is not depicted in the video). We are taking this matter very seriously, conducting a thorough review, and are evaluating the appropriate response, including the possibility of personnel action.”