A public safety officer being treated at an emergency room in Detroit says he caught a fellow patient stealing a watch from an unconscious man.

James Lant, 59, an officer in Highland Park, Mich., was at the hospital with a job-related knee injury when he says he noticed another man being treated there shaking a patient lying on a gurney next to him. When the patient didn’t wake up, Lant says the man took the watch off the unconscious patient’s wrist and stuffed it into his pants, then pretended to be asleep.

Lant says he wasn’t sure what he had seen. “It was almost like for a second, I questioned my senses. It was so smooth,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “I could see the whole thing happening right before my eyes.”

But Lant says that when the man started rummaging in the unconscious man’s pants pocket, he was sure of what he had seen and called security.

The accused, Tyrone Allen, 41, was arraigned on a larceny charge and released on bond. A court date was set for May 17.