Black Hospital Patient Arrested After Going For A Walk With An IV Drip

A 24-year-old black man claims that he was racially profiled after police arrested him while he was wearing a hospital gown and hooked up to an IV drip. Shaquille Dukes was being treated at FHN Memorial Hospital in Freeport, Illinois for double pneumonia when he decided to stretch his legs.

On his second day in the hospital, he started to feel a little better and asked if he could go for a walk outside. Dukes, his boyfriend, and his brother were walking by the parking lot when a security guard called them over and accused them of trying to "leave the hospital and sell the IV equipment on eBay."

"I was livid, I was irate," Dukes told CNN. "The first thing he said to me wasn't, 'What's your name? Can I help you?' but 'Are you stealing this?'"

The men began to argue and the security guard said they began cursing and got in his face. The guard claimed that he felt threatened by the men and called the police, who took them into custody. Dukes wrote on Facebook that the officers took away his rescue inhaler and only gave it back to him after he became unresponsive in the back of the police car.

"They took my rescue inhaler and began to transport me to the city lockup, while in transit I began to have a seizure, and subsequently am asthma attack, I pleaded with officers for almost 4 minutes to retrieve my inhaler from the transporting officer, and finally, when I became unresponsive, it miraculously appeared."

The Freeport Police Department has hired an independent investigator to look into the arrest but defended the conduct of their officers.

"It was determined that he was likely not trying to steal any of the property," Freeport Police Chief Todd Barkalow told ABC News. "But the charges were supported for disorderly conduct with their actions toward the security guard."

The three men were charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct, while Duke's boyfriend and brother were also charged with misdemeanor resisting arrest.