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A nurse at a Central Florida hospital, who was more than 32 weeks pregnant, was giving medicine to a patient in the behavioral health unit early Saturday morning when the patient began to scream.

Moments later, another patient, Joseph Wuerz, entered the room, shoved the nurse against a wall and tried to kick her, the Longwood Police Department wrote in an arrest report. South Seminole Hospital security officers swiftly pulled Wuerz off the nurse, and although none of the kicks landed, she was “terrified and shocked and unsure about injury … to the unborn child,” she told police.

During a visit to another hospital to check on her baby, doctors found no heartbeat and told the nurse her baby had died, according to the arrest report.

Police arrested Wuerz, 53, and charged him with homicide of an unborn child, aggravated battery on a first responder and aggravated battery on a pregnant victim, according to the arrest report. As of Thursday morning, Wuerz was being held in jail on bonds totaling $90,000, according to sheriff’s office records.

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An attorney for Wuerz did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post early Thursday.

On Saturday, Wuerz was being held at the hospital under the Baker Act, a Florida law that allows people with mental illness to be committed to a health institution for 72 hours under certain criteria. The nurse told police that Wuerz was not one of her patients and that he did not say anything during the alleged attack.

As coronavirus fears grow, doctors and nurses face abuse, attacks

Saturday’s incident represents one of many recent reports of violence against U.S. hospital workers. A day after the Central Florida attack, a woman in Scranton, Pa., allegedly assaulted two behavioral health nurses, one of whom was pregnant, WBRE reported. Two weeks earlier, a man was arrested for allegedly stabbing a nurse in Newport News, Va., the Virginian-Pilot reported.

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In 2018, medical workers accounted for 73 percent of all nonfatal workplace injuries arising from violence, according to data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And hospitals and nurses unions report the violence has only grown worse during the pandemic as wait times have grown longer and policies more strict. Workers at a Missouri hospital, having seen a significant uptick in assaults and injuries, in September were preparing to begin wearing panic buttons that would alert security and flag their location in the event of an attack, The Post reported.

Missouri hospital workers are being assaulted on the job. New panic buttons allow them to summon security.

Behavioral health nurses experience particularly high levels of verbal and physical abuse, according to a 2018 study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry. The study found that over 88 percent of behavioral health nurses surveyed experienced verbal abuse on the job, while 56 percent experienced physical violence. Less than 3 percent of the nurses experienced no violence, the study found.

The Florida nurse told investigators that her pregnancy had been progressing normally and the baby was healthy, according to the arrest report. She said the “stress she was under during the attack may have caused her unborn child’s death,” the report states.

The Orange County Medical Examiner’s Office plans to perform an autopsy on the baby.

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