A panicked family spent a year looking for their daughter after a California hospital told them she had checked herself out against medical advice — just to finally find out she’d been decomposing in its morgue the entire time, a new lawsuit alleges.
Jessie Peterson, 31, died at the Mercy San Juan Medical Center, just outside Sacramento, in April last year after admitting herself for treatment for her long-diagnosed Type 1 diabetes, according to a negligence suit filed this month.
Her grief-stricken relatives, however, claim the hospital failed to inform them about her death and instead quickly shipped her body off to its storage facility where she would lie forgotten in a freezer for months.
They only recently learned of Peterson’s fate after spending a painstaking year reporting her missing to cops, posting flyers, calling friends and canvassing the area she frequented in a bid to track her down, court papers charge.
“Mercy San Juan stored Jessie in an off-site warehouse morgue and she was left to decompose for nearly a year while her family relentlessly inquired about her whereabouts,” the lawsuit states.
By that time, Peterson’s body was “so decomposed that an open casket funeral was not feasible” and her fingerprints couldn’t be obtained for any keepsakes, the lawsuit says.
Her remains were also “so discolored that her tattoos could not be identified,” stated the lawsuit seeking $5 million in damages.
According to the suit, Peterson had checked herself into the hospital on April 6, 2023 after experiencing a flare-up tied to her diabetes — a condition she was diagnosed with at 10 and was regularly treated for.
She called her mom, Ginger Congi, two days later and asked to be picked up, according to the suit. But when the mother arrived at the hospital, she was allegedly informed that Peterson’s medical records showed she’d checked herself out against medical advice on April 8.
Peterson’s mom and two sisters “relentlessly” began searching for their missing relative over the next few months, the suit says.
Then, more than a year after her family was led to believe she had vanished, a Sacramento County Sheriff’s detective reached out on April 12 to inform them that her body had been located in one of Mercy San Juan’s off-site storage facilities, according to court docs.
Peterson’s death certificate — which wasn’t signed until April this year when her body was located — lists that she died from “cardiopulmonary arrest” at age 31, the suit states.
Her loved ones claim they weren’t able to do an autopsy to rule out any alleged medical malpractice because it took a year to be informed of her death.
“Defendants’ failure to issue a timely certificate of death, failure to notify Jessie’s next of kin, failure to allow an autopsy, and mishandling of Jessie’s remains [was] negligent, careless, and heartless,” the lawsuit states.
“While a patient that doesn’t survive may be just another lifeless body to Mercy San Juan hospital, Jessie was a family member, daughter, and sister, all of whom deserved the dignity and respect Mercy San Juan grossly failed to provide.”
Her family is seeking more than $5 million in damages.
The Post reached out to Dignity Health, which operates Mercy San Juan, but didn’t hear back immediately.
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