Mercedes Wells left an Indiana hospital last weekend expecting she’d have more time before her baby arrived. Instead, just minutes after staff allegedly sent her home while she was in active labor, the 23-year-old mother delivered her daughter on the side of a roadway — a moment captured on video and now shared widely online by family members who say the hospital failed her in a moment of clear medical need.

Wells and her husband, Leon, say they first called Franciscan Health Crown Point Hospital on Saturday, Nov. 15, to warn staff she was experiencing intense contractions. They say they received no guidance. When Wells arrived in person, she was evaluated and then discharged the next day, allegedly told to go home and wait for her labor to progress. According to her family, her contractions were as close as one minute apart.

“I begged to STAY,” Wells later wrote in a Facebook post describing her experience in the triage unit. “I was treated SO poorly and inhumane. I still can’t believe it.”

The couple barely made it eight minutes down the road before Wells realized she wasn’t going to make it to another hospital. She delivered her daughter, Alena Ariel Wells, on the roadside — 6 pounds, 18.5 inches, born in the family’s car before emergency crews arrived.

Alena is healthy, and Wells later received treatment at Munster Community Hospital. But the family is demanding answers from Franciscan Health Crown Point, saying the hospital ignored their concerns, dismissed a woman who was clearly in labor, and put both mother and child at risk.

The Wells family, all of whom are Black, say they can’t separate what happened from longstanding racial disparities in maternal care. They’ve retained an attorney and are speaking publicly about what they describe as biased and negligent treatment — the kind of systemic failure that Black mothers, in particular, have been calling out for years.

“If this helps someone else — if it strengthens or gives courage to another woman going through this — then that’s what I’m looking for,” Wells’ uncle, Lance Thompson Jr., told WLS.

Franciscan Health Crown Point President and CEO Raymond Grady said in a statement that the hospital is investigating the incident and called the footage “deeply troubling.”

“The reality is disparities in healthcare outcomes exist,” Grady said. “Franciscan Health Crown Point strives to be part of the solution, not the problem.”

For Wells, the shock of how her daughter entered the world hasn’t worn off. She says she is grateful her baby is safe — but she’s determined not to let the experience go quietly.