Newly released footage from security cameras at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro shows employees playing cards, watching TV and goofing around as an ailing patient sat slumped in his chair and virtually ignored for 22 hours before his death.

Steven Howard Sabock, 50, died at Cherry Hospital on April 29 after a three-day stay. An investigation into his neglect triggered officials to pull the facility's federal funding in September, costing taxpayers millions.

The security camera footage was described in a scathing investigative report released in August. But the video was not made public until today, after The News & Observer and other media outlets forced the state Department of Health and Human Services to release it in cooperation with Sabock's widow.

The footage from Sabock's last day shows the staff failed to recognize that he was in distress after he choked on his medication and fell, hitting his head, on the evening of April 28. After administering the Heimlich maneuver, staff members put Sabock in a chair in a dayroom in the hospital's adult admissions ward. He didn't eat or drink and appeared unconscious.

He was left sitting in that chair largely unattended until nearly a day later -- soaked for much of the time in his own urine. The video shows a succession of employees over the span of three work shifts looking at Sabock, before walking on without making sure he was OK.

Hospital officials eventually fired four of the 16 staff members who were on duty in the ward where Sabock was neglected. However, no one was ever charged criminally in the case.

Though outside consultants recently issued an assessment heavily critical of the hospital's top managers, DHHS Secretary Dempsey Benton has yet to institute major changes at the troubled hospital.

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