A South Pasadena doctor apologized on Tuesday after a video showed him yelling at a child with autism who was jumping around a waiting room.
The video shows ophthalmologist Dr. Raghu Murthy barging into the speech pathologist’s office directly above his practice and berating grandmother Aracely Beltran for her 7-year-old grandson’s horseplay.
“I didn’t see it coming,” Beltran said. “I was frightened for my grandson.”
Beltran said her grandson is also nonverbal and that moving and jumping around helps him regulate his nervous system.
“I couldn’t believe that a man who went to school to be a doctor and is supposed to treat patients with kindness and respect, for him to treat a 7-year-old like this,” she said.
Murthy said the jumping and movement lasted for around 20 minutes and almost caused his patient to lose their eyesight.
“I can’t take that back. I can tell you I’m truly sorry about that, but there was a real reason,” Murthy said. “The patient moved because someone stomped on the floor upstairs. She almost moved right into the needle, and she would have been blind if that happened.”
He said he acted irrationally out of frustration and had already asked two assistants upstairs to ask the speech pathology office to control the jumping.
“I take pride in my work,” Murthy said. “I am not proud of the fact that for 30 seconds I acted in such a rude and immature fashion.”
Murthy’s office said they have been receiving alarming threats since the incident.