The public safety director at New Orleans’ Ernest N. Morial Convention Center — where officials are erecting a makeshift hospital for patients infected with COVID-19 — stole 80 masks recommended for healthcare workers battling the deadly disease and was arrested Friday, according to court records.

Vernon Giscombe, 58, who has held his position since 2013, faces one count of malfeasance in office, Louisiana State Police wrote in the records.

The sales and marketing vice president of the convention center, Tim Hemphill, said Saturday that Giscombe had been suspended indefinitely following his arrest while the facility conducted an internal investigation.

According to troopers, a state Department of Public Safety officer became suspicious when he spotted a woman emerge from the back of the convention center carrying two boxes, which she then placed in a silver sedan about 11:20 p.m. Friday. The officer stopped the car and learned that the woman and the driver — Giscombe — worked for the state-owned convention center’s public safety department.

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Giscombe and the woman, whose name wasn’t released, allegedly told the officer that Giscombe had instructed her to throw the boxes, which contained 20 N95 masks each, into his car. She said the boxes of masks, which are in critically short supply in hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic, came from a manager’s office.

After being read his constitutional rights, Giscombe admitted he had gotten another employee earlier in the day to bring him another two boxes of the masks, troopers alleged. Troopers said they found that pair of boxes at Giscombe’s home after he gave them permission to search it, and they booked him with allegedly failing to perform his duties to the public.

Orleans Parish Magistrate Court Commissioner Brigid Collins set Giscombe's bail at $2,500 on Saturday afternoon.

He could face up to five years in prison as well as a maximum fine of $5,000 if convicted of malfeasance in office.

Court documents do not say what troopers suspect Giscombe intended to do with the masks. Since the pandemic started, there have been accounts across the world of people stealing protective equipment to sell at inflated prices.

N95 masks offer frontline medical workers some of the most reliable protection against particularly infectious diseases. But hospitals have reported a shortage of such masks as COVID-19 — the lethal, highly contagious disease caused by the coronavirus — has spread across the globe.

In an effort to ease the strain on area medical centers, crews on Saturday were putting the finishing touches on a 1,000-bed field hospital inside the convention center to treat coronavirus patients who no longer need acute treatment. Officials plan to open the facility on Monday.

According to his Linkedin profile, Giscombe joined the convention center’s staff as the assistant public safety director in March 2013. He spent the previous year as an operations contractor at the facility, his profile said.