Security footage captured the moment a disoriented black man suffering from kidney failure was tackled to the ground and interrogated after security guards mistook him for a car thief.
Video obtained by DailyMail.com, shows Hughie Robinson, 52, walking around the lobby of the Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St Louis, Missouri on April 10, 2021 when a security guard speaking on his radio approaches him.
The security guard then confronts Robinson, who seems visibly confused, and takes out a pair of handcuffs.
The two men speak for a few seconds, until another security guard could be seen grabbing his arm, and grabs his neck, pushing him to the ground as the first officer holds him down.
At that point, another security guard could be seen coming up the escalator, who soon gets involved in the altercation and holds Robinson’s legs down, as one of the other officers handcuffs him behind his back.
The third officer could be seen speaking into his radio, but it is unclear what he said as there is no audio in the recording.
After the third officer gets up and releases his leg, the second officer could be seen patting Robinson down, and later pulls him back on his feet, escorting him out of frame.
Video obtained by DailyMail.com shows the moment a security guard at the Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St Louis, Missouri confronted Hughie Robinson, 52, and took out his handcuffs
Soon another officer could be seen grabbing Robinson’s arm, as the first officer restrains him
The second officer then appears to grab Robinson by the neck and he and the other security guard force Robinson to the ground
A third officer soon comes up the escalator and holds down his legs as he speaks on his radio
The second officer could be seen putting him in handcuffs and forcing him to stand up
A second video then shows the security guards at the hospital leading him into a windowless interrogation room.
Almost immediately after they enter the room, the guards could be seen pushing him against the wall, as Robinson exclaims: ‘I didn’t do nothing! I didn’t do nothing.’
Still, the officers continue to shout at him and pat him down, urging him to stop moving. Eventually, they lead him into a chair and take away his cellphone and his wallet.
Robinson then explains to the officers: ‘I’ve been looking for my car all day. And they knew I was still looking for my car.’
But one of the officers interjects and says, ‘No, you’ve been here for over 12 hours. We even offered you a ride earlier to find your car and you left.’
Robinson, though, who seems disoriented then denies that the officer offered to help him, saying ‘I didn’t see you, I didn’t see you.’
Finally, after a few minutes, the officers look at Robinson’s parking ticket and realize he was looking for his car in the wrong parking garage.
‘So the reason we contacted you, I guess you were walking around in there for your car or something and somebody called and said “Dude in a black jumpsuit is looking into cars,” and we’ve definitely got a huge people breaking into cars problem here,’ one of the guards tells him.
‘That ain’t me,’ Robinson replies. ‘I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t know that.
‘She just grabs me,’ he says of the female security guard, ‘then he grabbed me,’ he said, pointing to the officer that grabbed his arm, I was like “What the hell is going on?”
The security guards then tell him that they tackled him because he refused to comply with orders to put his hands behind his back, but as Robinson explains, ‘I just wanted to know what the Hell was going on – why am I being grabbed?’
Still, the guards continue to claim that he was not following orders, with the officer who originally grabbed his arm saying: ‘So man, when he told you to put your hands behind your back three times and you didn’t, I grabbed your arms.’
‘Stop talking c***,’ Robinson tells him. ‘He was going to do it any way.
‘What did I do?’ he asks again. ‘I told you, I was looking for my damn car.’
A second video shows that the officers led Robinson into an interrogation room where they pushed him against the wall and patted him down, taking away his cellphone and wallet
The officers told him that they thought he was casing the parking lot looking for cars to steal, even though he insisted he was just looking for his car – which was parked in the other lot
Eventually, the officers let Robinson go with a warning to never return to the hospital
At that point, the officers finally agree to let Robinson go, saying they will bring him to the correct parking garage, but not before one of the officers threatens him.
‘Now, you are no longer welcome on this property, alright?’ the unnamed security guard tells Robinson. ‘And the only time you’re going to be allowed to come back to this property is if you’re going to the ER, alright? You got that?
‘If one of my officers or WashU officers see you back on this property again, we’re going to do this whole thing again, ’cause you ain’t supposed to be here. You cool with that?’
Robinson does not seem to say anything as the officers get him to stand up, take off his handcuffs and walk him out of the interrogation room.
He has since filed a lawsuit against Barnes-Jewish Hospital, a property of Washington University, accusing the officers of assault, battery and false imprisonment.
It claims that the officers should have known he was a patient at the hospital, as he was still wearing his hospital bracelet and had a port in his arm, as he was being interrogated.
Robinson was seeking an undisclosed amount in damages, but died in April of this year before the lawsuit could move forward.
It is now on hold, as his family petitions the Missouri Probate Court to appoint his daughter, Chelsea, as his personal representative.
Robinson had been receiving treatment at the Barnes-Jewish Hospital for stage four kidney failure. He is pictured here in 2020 during a screening for a potential transplant
The family of Robinson, 52 (pictured) is now suing the Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St Louis, Missouri, accusing the officers of assault, battery and false imprisonment
According to court documents obtained by DailyMail.com, the altercation with the security guards – who attorney Rick Voytas said are their own private police force complete with guns – came after Robinson completed a four-day stay at the hospital.
Robinson had been suffering from stage IV renal failure, and was being treated at the hospital at the time.
On April 7, 2021, the lawsuit claims, he received a call that he was second in line for a possible kidney transplant, and he posted on Facebook the next day: ‘Yes they finally called me. If my kidney transplant [goes well], no more dialysis.’
Robinson added that he was ‘happy, nervous [and] scared’ and hoped everything would ‘go right this last time.’
He then drove to the hospital and parked in the garage at Kingshighway Boulevard near Interstate-40, and spent four days in a weakened state, drugged and prepared for the transplant.
But hospital staff ultimately decided that the kidney was not a match for Robinson, and he was released from the hospital on April 10.
He drove himself home in 1995 Buick Park Avenue at around 9.45am that day, the lawsuit claims, and was resting when a nurse at the hospital called him at around 5pm to inform him that he left his wallet in the hospital room.
The nurse told him that when he returns he can park in the garage on Euclid and Forest Park Avenues, even though he normally parked at the garage on the other side of campus – on Kingshighway Boulevard near Interstate-40.
Robinson did as he was told, the lawsuit states, and retrieved his wallet at around 5.30pm.
He then tried to return to his car, searching through the Kingshighway Boulevard garage for his vehicle.
By about 6.25pm, after walking through the garage once, Robinson sought help from the hospital’s main desk, and a security guard walked with him through the garage, but were again unable to find his vehicle as it was parked in the other garage.
About an hour and 20 minutes later, Robinson asked for help again, according to lawsuit, but this did not receive any assistance, so he returned to the Kingshighway garage to look for his car once again.
At that point, the lawsuit says, another security guard saw Robinson looking around the garage and reported that he and a ‘lookout’ seemed to be trying to steal cars.
Robinson was at the Barnes-Jewish Hospital (pictured) for a kidney transplant that never came, and returned to the hospital that day because hospital officials told him he left his wallet in the room
The lawsuit also claims Robinson had asked the guards, ‘What did I do?’ before they tackled him to the ground.
‘The guards did not answer,’ the suit, filed in the St Louis Circuit Court, states.
‘Instead, one guard grabbed Hughie’s shoulder and arm forcefully in the arm where Hughie’s arm was tender from the port. Another of Defendant’s guards tackled Hughie.
‘Both guards began to beat Hughie.
‘A third guard then jumped on top of Hughie.
‘Hughie cried out that the guards were hurting him. At least one of the guards responded “Good.”
‘The guards then forced Hughie into a pair of handcuffs.’
It goes on to claim: ‘While walking Hughie down [the] hallway, one of the guards wrenched Hughie’s shoulder in an angry, violent fashion, damaging Hughie’s shoulder and rotator cuff.’
Then when they were in the interrogation room, the lawsuit says, ‘one of the Barnes guards, a tall, heavy-set man with a buzz cut smashed Hughie’s head into the wall with his forearm.’
As a result, the lawsuit claims he suffered ‘serious personal injuries and was damaged.’
It says that the security guards attack and interrogation ‘were wanton, malicious and calculated to punish harm and embarrass’ Robinson, and notes that none of the guards in the video have been disciplined for their actions.
Meanwhile, Robinson had to return to the hospital several times in the aftermath, as he continued to receive treatment for his kidney failure.
But his daughter told the St Louis Post-Dispatch he was afraid each time he had to return to the hospital, and to be safe, the newspaper reports, he would often call Voytas to accompany him on his trips.
And on Facebook on April 13, Robinson updated his friends that the transplant was prolonged because they could not find a match as he described his eventful departure from the hospital.
‘Check this out, after I left the hospital, I forgot what part of my car at in the garage.
‘I’m walking through the garage looking for my car, I was suspicious, the police came. I’m just at the hospital, you know, it’s crazy.
‘And also one more thing, I’m in the office in the back room at Barnes hospital handcuffed for no reason except being profiled and lied on.’
He said he was finally released when one of the security guards received a phone call.
Robinson posted about the altercation on Facebook in April 2021
His daughter, Chelsea, is now suing BJC Health for the incident, telling the Post-Dispatch that the videos broke her heart.
‘He was just standing there, not doing anything,’ she said, when the guards confronted him.
‘Anybody with common sense can see what happened,’ she added. ‘I just want justice for my father.’
DailyMail.com has reached out to attorneys for the hospital, who have previously tried to dismiss the case and are now trying to strike certain allegations from the lawsuit.
They also previously sought a protective order to keep the videos out of the public eye, according to the Post-Dispatch, which St Louis Circuit Court Judge Joan Moriarty initially granted, but overturned when she realized that the two videos did not show any other identifiable patients.