Kings County Hospital Center knocked everybody down when a surveillance tape, showing a dying patient totally ignored, was visualized in court as part of a lawsuit filed a year ago by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the New York State Mental Hygiene Legal Service, and Kirland & Ellis LLP.

The lawsuit accuses the psychiatric hospital of not treating its patients properly, neglecting them totally to the point of dying. Moreover, the lawsuit called the psychiatric center “a chamber of filth, decay, indifference, and danger.” Patients at the hospital “are subjected to overcrowded and squalid conditions often accompanied by physical abuse and unnecessary and punitive injections of mind-altering drugs,” the lawsuit reads.

Esmin Elizabeth Green, a 49-year-old woman, was the victim of such behavior.

Surveillance tape shows her sliding off her chair at 5:32 a.m. on June 19 with her face down. Half an hour later, a security guard passed by, looked at her, and continued his way offering no help to the woman.

Green was brought at the hospital on June 18 after suffering some kind of nervous breakdown. She was showing signs of agitation and psychosis. Because there was a shortage of psychiatric beds, she waited nearly 24 hours in the psychiatric emergency room with no help at all.

After a day of terrible struggle and an hour after she collapsed on the floor, staff members thought to revive her, but, unfortunately, it was too late. She was already dead. What exactly was the cause of her death is currently under investigation, according to the city medical examiner.

The day after her death, staff members responsible for the tragic incident were fired, hospital officials said, according to the New York Times. More exactly, the director of psychiatry, the doctor of duty and the director of security at Kings County were fired. Also, two nurses and a security guard had been suspended pending union-mandated hearings, Ana Marengo, a representative for the Health and Hospitals Corporation, said.

“We are shocked and distressed by this situation. It is clear that some of our employees failed to act based on our compassionate standards of care,” president of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, Alan D. Aviles said in a statement Tuesday. He further promised a thorough investigation “to answer any questions that remain.”

The hospital staff’s ignorance shocked even New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg who said “horrified is much too nice a word” to describe the way he feels about the incident, the New York Daily News quoted him as saying on Tuesday. “Disgusted, I think, is a better word,” he continued.

Following the awful incident, the hospital is required, under the court agreement, to have no more than 25 patients in the emergency room at any time, and to check on them every 15 minutes. Also, over the next four months, the hospitals will attempt to shorten the median waiting time around 10 hours.

Five other patients at the Kings County Hospital Center testified in the above-mentioned lawsuit saying they were severely abused or/ and neglected.