A California family was recently left heartbroken after searching for their presumed missing daughter for roughly a year. 31-year-old Jessica Peterson was believed to have checked out of a hospital against medical advice last year and had gone missing. However, it was revealed this month that Peterson’s body had been decomposing in the hospital’s morgue the entire time.
In April 2023, Peterson was admitted to the Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, California, outside of Sacramento, after she had suffered a diabetic episode. The hospital had told her family that she was discharged from the hospital just two days later, according to a lawsuit filed by the family. Subsequently, the family embarked on a “relentless” search to find Peterson.
“The family searched and searched for Jessie. It was not until April 12, 2024, that the Sacramento County Detective’s Office notified Jessie’s family that she was found deceased at Mercy San Juan hospital,” the lawsuit filed by the plaintiffs’ attorney Marc Greenberg stated.
The complaint further detailed the decomposed state of Peterson’s body. “At this point, Jessie’s body was so decomposed that an open casket funeral was not feasible, and Jessie’s fingerprints were not even obtainable for any keepsake,” the lawsuit added, claiming her body was also “so discolored that her tattoos could not be identified.”
The lawyer slammed the hospital for negligence that completely contradicted its mission statement of providing care to all its patients. “Mercy San Juan hospital advertises that ‘at our care facilities, we take pride in treating all people with dignity and respect.’ In this case, there was no dignity and no respect,” Greenberg said.
“Mercy San Juan hospital failed in its most fundamental duty to notify Jessie’s family of her death,” Greenberg continued in his criticism of the health care provider. “Mercy San Juan stored Jessie in an off-site warehouse and she was left to decompose for nearly a year while her family relentlessly inquired about her whereabouts.”
“I have absolutely no faith in your hospital and the way you care for patients. You’ve lost all of that from me,” Peterson’s mother, Ginger Congi, said. “All I could think about was, her lying on the side of a river, decomposing all by herself, and all along she was in a freezer in some storage facility. It was pretty devastating. Once we figured it all out,” she added.
Peterson’s family filed the lawsuit in Sacramento County Superior Court earlier this month, demanding more than $5 million in damages and a jury trial. The legal action alleged negligence for mishandling a corpse, causing emotional distress, and a violation of California’s health and safety code. “We extend our deepest sympathies to the family during this difficult time,” Dignity Health said in a statement regarding the lawsuit. “We are unable to comment on pending litigation.”
“She wanted me to come and pick her up,” Congi recounted. “She wanted to leave the hospital. I told her she was in the best place to get the best care that she needed. She needed to stay put.” She continued, “They said they didn’t have anybody there by that name. And I asked them to double check, because I’d just seen her a week before, and spoke to her on the telephone, spelled her name for them, and the man on the phone said, ‘Well, we don’t have anybody here by that name,'” Congi said.
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