A Loveland police officer was fired after he hit a woman in the face while she was being evaluated at the hospital, the department announced Wednesday.

The incident, being investigated by the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office, happened Saturday evening. The officer has not been identified.

Officers initially responded to a report of a woman walking in and out of traffic and speaking incoherently near North Garfield Avenue and East 29th Street. The officers put her in custody and took her to the Medical Center of the Rockies for evaluation.

The woman was “verbally abusive toward health care professionals and spat at a nurse and on one of the officers,” the news release states. “The officer responded with an inappropriate use of force by striking the female in the face, causing minor injuries to her face. The offending officer’s partner immediately intervened, removed him from the room and radioed for a supervisor to respond to the scene.”

The woman was later medically cleared and transported to the Larimer County jail.

The police department put the officer on administrative leave that evening, and Police Chief Tim Doran asked the district attorney’s office the next day for a criminal investigation into what happened.

The officer was fired Tuesday.

Doran said in a video posted from the city’s YouTube account that the officer was still in his first-year probationary period, standard for all new officers.

The sheriff’s office investigation is active, and the district attorney’s office will determine any charges.

Editor’s note: The headline of this article has been updated to correct that the woman was not hospitalized when the officer hit her. She was at Medical Center of the Rockies for a mental health evaluation but she was not admitted.

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