A Loveland, Colorado police officer has been fired after allegedly punching a handcuffed woman who appeared to spit on him in a hospital examination room, authorities said.
In body camera footage of the May 20 incident shared Friday by the Loveland Police Department, the woman curses at Officer Russell Maranto as she is escorted to a chair. He is heard calling the names of the officers, including a “piece of s—“. When the officer takes a piece of paper from her hand, she seems to get angrier.
“Hey, fuck, give it back to me, fucking piece of s—,” she said. “Hey, I can have it. Why can’t I have a piece of paper?”
The video shows the woman, identified as Angelia Hall, 59, spitting towards the ground as she continues to demand that they return the piece of paper to her. She continues to scream before spitting on the officer.
In the video, Maranto punches the woman in the face. A second officer intervenes and steps between the two. The woman shouts that she wants a video of the officer who allegedly hit her.
“He fucking punched me in the face,” she screams. “I want a video of this. I didn’t touch him. My hands are cuffed. … I can’t even fight back.”
In a video statement on Friday, Police Chief Tim Doran praised the second officer for his intervention and said officers were “verbally harassed with excessive profanity and periodic racial slurs.” He said a supervisor was called into the exam room and immediately reported.
“Loveland, our police department is filled with brave, respectful and honorable officials and we all agree that inappropriate conduct will never be tolerated or minimized by your service,” he said.
The district attorney’s office is still considering criminal charges against Maranto, 28, police said. Hall was charged with third-degree assault, police said.
At the time of the incident, Maranto had worked for the department for less than a year. It is unclear if he has an attorney who can speak on his behalf. The police union did not immediately return a request for comment on Saturday. Hall could not be contacted.
The police department came under fire in 2020 when a former officer injured an elderly woman with dementia during an arrest. The officer, Austin Hopp, pleaded guilty to charges related to Karen Garner’s arrest on June 26, 2020 and was sentenced to five years in prison.
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com