An employee at Inova Alexandria Hospital has been fired, and the Alexandria Police Department is looking into how a patient’s credit cards were stolen from a hospital room and used at a nearby store.
An Inova Alexandria Hospital employee later identified a woman in hospital scrubs wearing an Inova lanyard around her neck, according to a recently disclosed search warrant affidavit. The police have not filed any charges, and while Inova did not provide the employee’s job title, the hospital system acknowledged that the employee is no longer employed there.
“This incident is currently under investigation by APD,” Tracy Walker, the APD communications manager, told ALXnow.
On June 8, police arrived at the hospital after receiving a phone call from a man who said that his wife’s handbag, credit cards, and IDs had been stolen from her hospital room. According to the search warrant document, the man also informed the police that he was receiving fraud alerts on his phone indicating that someone was attempting to use his wife’s credit cards at the Target Skyline store (5115 Leesburg Pike) in Falls Church, which was approximately two miles away.
“He made statements that he was not the one who attempted to purchase items at Target due to him being with his wife at the hospital,” APD said in the search warrant affidavit. “On this same date I spoke with loss prevention of the Bailey’s Crossroads Target and was shown video of the person attempting and successfully using the victim’s credit cards. A photo of the female subject wearing hospital scrubs and an Inova hospital lanyard could be seen using the cards.
APD did not reveal the amount of money stolen.
The photo was then taken to the hospital, where “it was advised that Security and Hospital staff had identified the person in question as an employee of the Alexandria Inova Hospital that day,” police said in the search warrant affidavit.
