A nurse who works with Toronto’s homeless has stepped forward to claim that last week’s alleged beating of an aboriginal man at St. Michael’s Hospital was not an isolated incident.

Keren Elumir wrote to St. Mike’s last June about an incident involving one of her patients.

“I was horrified that this would happen at a place that’s suppose to be a safe place,” she told CBC News.

A man came to her with injuries he alleged he received after being beaten by security guards at the hospital.

“He had a tooth that had fallen out from the beating, he said. And we have that tooth on file still. And he had boot prints — bruises in the shape of boot prints — on his torso,” she said Thursday.

The patient was an intravenous drug user who was waiting in the hospital’s emergency room after suffering a seizure on the street.

He said he had yelled at a security guard who then dragged him to another room where several guards took part in the beating, Elumir said.

“His lower lip was cut. It looked like concrete burn — that his face had been on the ground,” she said.

Elumir said she was shocked at the injuries and took photos as evidence.

After a dozen calls, Elumir was told to fax the complaint to a community worker at St. Michael’s. She said she has never heard back.

“Hospitals should be safe for everybody and … should be a place where people, even people that are addicted and mentally ill and maybe not very stable, can still be able to be kept safe.”

On Thursday, CBC News reported on a Feb. 4 incident in which an aboriginal man said he and his wife were beaten and had racial insults hurled at them by hospital security guards.

Cliff Hussin admits that he and his wife Donna Oakes were loud and drunk when they visited his cousin at St. Michael’s Hospital that day. The trouble started after they were told to leave.

“They [security guards] started getting a little abusive to, like, Donna. They were grabbing her and telling her, telling us, ‘You natives are nothing but trouble,’ and that we were drunks and will never amount to anything. It was horrible,” Hussin said.

Oakes said her husband was kicked unconscious by security guards and then dragged outside by his hair.

Hussin was later treated at another hospital for three broken ribs and a punctured lung.

Doug Johnson, a pastor who works with street people, has made a formal complaint to the St. Michael’s patient affairs department on behalf of Hussin and Oakes.

“This is completely and totally unacceptable. There are good and acceptable non-violent ways of dealing with people that need to be escorted out of buildings,” Johnson said.

“Something has to be done for these kind of things to stop,” he said.

In a statement released Thursday night, St. Michael’s said it has “initiated a comprehensive investigation into the complaint and will respond directly to the complainants about the results of that investigation.”

The hospital also said it has ordered an independent investigation of the incident.

“In light of the seriousness of these allegations, and in addition to our own investigation, the hospital will be asking an external organization to conduct an independent review of the situation,” the statement said.