Jessie Peterson’s family spent a year searching for her after they were told that she had checked herself out of a California hospital against medical advice – before they learned that she had been dead all along.
The 31-year-old died in the care of Mercy San Juan medical center in Sacramento in April 2023. The hospital shipped her body to a storage facility and did not inform her mother and sisters. The family only learned her fate the following April after months of trying to find her, according to a civil lawsuit against the hospital.
In the lawsuit, filed earlier this month, the family described the hospital’s conduct as “malicious and outrageous” and accused the facility of negligence, the negligent handling of a corpse and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
This is sadly not the first time I’ve heard about this, and the first time I did involved the hospital literally calling a Taxi for the corpse, sending it home, and assuring the cab driver he was just sleeping.
The family was not amused