Motorcyclist Mahmoud Sousi was a 29-year-old husband and father when he died in St. Peteburg’s Bayfront Medical Center after a fatal crash last August.

His young widow’s sorrow soon turned to anger when she found out surveillance cameras caught a hospital security guard stealing her dying husband’s wallet. 

“It was two year anniversary gift for him,” said Ali Henderson. “Honestly it made me really sick to my stomach and was pretty baffled and really couldn’t comprehend how somebody could be that crooked, especially given the circumstances and the roof that we were under.”

It turns out such crimes are not all that unusual in hospitals everywhere.

Largo police arrested a worker at Largo Medical Center for stealing $8,200 from a patient, and in Clearwater, Morton Plant Hospital itself was the victim when a trusted vendor wheeled a $48,000 hospital bed out of an operating room and stole it in broad daylight.

In Tampa, police investigated a jealous boyfriend in the labor and delivery area of Tampa General Hospital who punched a woman in the head after she received a call from another man shortly after giving birth.

In that same hospital, a nurse reported a patient cooking meth in a public restroom.

In Pennsylvania, police busted a patient with more than 300 bags of heroin. She was selling it to dozens of customers who beat a steady path to her hospital sick bed for some relief of their own.

“Hospitals are not a place, as are schools, where we expect these bad things to happen. We presume they are safe,” said Jay Wolfson, University of South Florida Public Health expert. 

An 8 On Your Side investigation reviewed police logs showing hundreds of police calls to hospitals all over Tampa Bay that occur with regularity.

Those logs showed police showing up to one hospital as often as seven times in a single day.

Sometimes they follow crime victims and perpetrators form the community and sometimes the crimes originate at the hospitals themselves.

In a national survey by the International Association for Hospital Safety and Security, hospitals self-reported violent crimes such as murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault occurring at the annual rate of once for every 100 hospital beds.

Thefts happened with eight times that frequency and disorderly conduct incidents took place 34 times as often, according to 222 hospitals that participated in that survey.

“What is not uncommon is patients reacting to their circumstance, getting angry with staff, hitting them, scratching them, throwing things at them. This actually happens with some frequency,” Wolfson said.

Bayfront Medical Center and other Tampa Bay area hospitals contacted by 8 On Your Side all insist that safety and security of patients is of the utmost priority.

Bayfront said the alleged security guard theft of Sousi’s wallet was a rare event. He’s still facing trial for the crime and has not admitted guilt.

Whatever the circumstances of hospital crimes, it’s prudent for patients and their families to be aware that hospitals are not immune from the same crimes that take place elsewhere.

“We would hope that everybody would act appropriately in the hospital but the reality is a lot of people on the worst day of their life end up in the hospital and the circumstances that put them there easily follow them,” said USF Health Director of Safety and Preparedness Don Mullins.

”Patients are very vulnerable when they’re lying in the hospital and trying to get better, so I think hospitals have a duty, but I think they accept that duty and are improving.”

Wolfson advises patients to avoid bring any valuables to the hospital, having family members present to advocate for their treatment and safety whenever possible and to report any suspicious activity.

Bayfront never did locate Sousi’s wallet, but assures 8 On Your Side the private security guard arrested for stealing it no longer works at the hospital.

That’s not good enough for Sousi’s widow who is still struggling with grief over the loss of her husband and figuring out how she’ll raise her 4-year-old daughter as a single mom.

“If it did not put my put my foot down and be as firm as I was, constantly going back to the security guard, constantly contacting them. I don’t think this would have ever been known or frankly found out about for that matter,” Henderson said. “Everything’s wrong with that.”