WakeMed employee suspended after restroom videos found on cellphone

A custodian is temporarily off the job at WakeMed after a discovery that his cellphone had been used to record people in a hospital restroom.

According to a search warrant, a woman at the hospital's main campus on New Bern Avenue in Raleigh found the phone Thursday hidden by paper towels in a waste basket that had been pushed near the toilet in a fifth-floor single-person restroom.

When the woman pulled it out of the trash, the warrant states, the camera was on.

She also told police that she noticed a man leaving the restroom before she went in and then saw him again re-entering when she left. At one point, according to the warrant, she said she heard him ask a supervisor if anyone had turned in a cellphone.

Police at WakeMed were able to track down the employee after calling his wife's number, which had been programmed into the phone under the label "Wife," the search warrant says.

Kristin Kelly, a spokeswoman for WakeMed, said in an email that the case is still an active investigation and that the man was suspended Friday without pay. He, however, has not been charged.

"It is WakeMed's policy to perform reference and criminal background checks prior to employment, neither of which showed any prior history," Kelly said.