"It was just terrible. What a terrible shock. Who thought that I was gonna go to the emergency room and get into a fight," Jerry Castaldo said.
Castaldo says it was the furthest thing from his mind back on the morning of January 12th when suddenly, sitting in his kitchen, his wife's words became slurred.
"She looked at me. She says, 'There's something wrong. I think I'm having a stroke," he said.
The Castaldos live but a few minutes from Bayonne Medical Center, so Jerry, not waiting for an ambulance, rushed his wife here in his own car because time is of the essence with a stroke. Jerry wasn't thinking and parked right in front of the emergency room in one of the spots for ambulances only.
"We were not blocking anyone. There was nobody else there in the parking lot," Pamela Castaldo said.
But the Castaldos say that didn't matter one bit to the security guard at the door, 39-year-old Emile DeSalvo.
"I said to him, 'My wife is having a stroke. I gotta get her in.' He said 'You have to move your car,'" Jerry explained. "I said, 'What's the matter with this guy?'"
Moments later, 75-year-old jerry found out. He says the guard knocked him to the ground and left him with bruises.
"My wife is sitting outside the door watching this guy punch me while she's having a stroke," he said. Dennis Fiuza had just brought his father into the E.R. for a heart attack and witnessed the whole thing.
"I saw the security guard push him to the ground, hit his head on the ground, and me and my brother ran over. I walked over to make sure he was alright. Next thing i know the security guard turns around and punches me in the face," Fiuza said.
"This type of behavior is completely unacceptable and as soon as it happened, we called the security company and we had the individual removed from our facility. The individual will never work in any of our facilities again," Dr. Mark Specktor, Bayonne Medical Center CEO, said.
The Castaldos are contemplating legal action.
"You think it's a safe place. You think you're gonna get the help you need, not get beat up," Jerry said.
