De­spite lin­ger­ing ques­tions over the be­hav­iour of a man who was record­ed walk­ing along the roof of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal this week, the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) has con­firmed that he was safe­ly re­cov­ered and treat­ed.

Videos cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia showed the man walk­ing along the steep rooftop be­fore he was re­strained and low­ered by an­oth­er in­di­vid­ual.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the SWRHA said the man was a pa­tient who had been dis­charged around 2 pm on Wednes­day. Af­ter leav­ing the ward, he made his way in­to an unau­tho­rised area and climbed on­to the roof of a build­ing ad­join­ing the main hos­pi­tal struc­ture.

Pe­ter Gar­cia, a med­ical at­ten­dant, with the as­sis­tance of se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel and oth­er staff mem­bers, in­ter­vened and se­cured the man, re­mov­ing him from the re­strict­ed area around 4.15 pm. The man was then tak­en to the hos­pi­tal’s Emer­gency De­part­ment for eval­u­a­tion and was sub­se­quent­ly dis­charged.

The SWRHA ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion to the staff in­volved in bring­ing the sit­u­a­tion un­der con­trol, de­scrib­ing their ac­tions as crit­i­cal in pre­vent­ing in­jury.

Po­lice con­firmed that of­fi­cers were dis­patched to the hos­pi­tal fol­low­ing re­ports of the in­ci­dent. How­ev­er, when they ar­rived, the man had al­ready left the com­pound.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, hos­pi­tal per­son­nel told of­fi­cers that the man had claimed a nurse had asked him to clean her house, and he re­fused be­cause he did not want to be paid, prompt­ing him to go on­to the roof.

An­oth­er in­di­vid­ual who spoke to Guardian Me­dia said the man claimed some­one want­ed to kill him, rais­ing con­cerns about his state of mind at the time of the in­ci­dent.

The SWRHA did not com­ment on the man’s re­port­ed state­ments but said he was as­sessed af­ter be­ing brought down from the roof and did not sus­tain se­ri­ous in­juries. —Kevon Felmine