SACRAMENTO — Jessie Peterson suffered a diabetic attack and was rushed to a hospital in Sacramento, California on April 6, 2023. The 31-year-old spoke to her mother on the phone two days later, asking her to come pick her up from the hospital.
But that phone call was the last her family ever heard from her.
Peterson's mother called the hospital three days later only to be told there was no one by that name. After persistent inquiries, she said she was told Jesse had left the hospital against medical advice.
Peterson's family began a relentless search, filing a missing persons report, reaching out to the community, posting fliers with her photo around town, and even getting her name added to the U.S. Department of Justice's missing persons website.
Finally, more than a year after his disappearance, a call from a detective with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office gave them the news they'd been dreading: Jesse's death certificate had been issued.
By Mark Greenberg, CNN via New Source
One of Jesse's sisters went to the Sacramento County Coroner's Office but was told the body was not there and to contact the hospital instead.
Peterson's mother, Ginger Kongi, contacted the hospital and was told they would call her back. They didn't immediately receive a call, but the morgue contacted Kongi later to say Jesse's body had been found in a refrigerated facility off the hospital grounds.
Her body was too decomposed to perform an autopsy.
In the end, Jesse passed away about two hours after his last phone call to his mother.
Jesse's family sues hospital for negligence
Jesse's fate is detailed in a $25 million lawsuit filed against the hospital.
In the lawsuit, her family claims the hospital failed to inform them of her death and then left her body behind.
The lawsuit accuses Dignity Health/Mercy San Juan Medical Center of negligence, negligent handling of a dead body, negligent infliction of emotional distress and violations of the California Health and Safety Code.
Dignity Health said in a statement: “We offer our deepest condolences to the family during this difficult time. We cannot comment on pending litigation.”
Jessie Peterson was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 10 years old, her family's attorney, Mark Greenberg, told CNN. She was hospitalized about 20 times over her life for complications from the disease, Greenberg said, including two in the months before her death and her final hospitalization on April 6, 2023. She also struggled with addiction and homelessness at times, Greenberg said.
The day after Peterson's death, his body was taken to a nearby morgue.
“On April 9, 2023, Mercy San Juan Hospital transferred Jesse's body to a refrigerated facility. Jesse was placed on shelf number Red 22A and forgotten about,” the lawsuit states.
“Although the hospital and Jesse's family had been in frequent contact with each other prior to his death and Ginger was listed as Jesse's next of kin, Jesse's family was not notified of his death,” the lawsuit states.
On April 4, 2024, some 362 days after Jesse Peterson's death, a death certificate was issued and signed by a doctor at Mercy San Juan Medical Center, who is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
Just a week later, detectives with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office notified Peterson's family of his death.
It's unclear why there was a delay in issuing Peterson's death certificate, as California health and safety law requires an attending physician to complete one within 15 hours of a patient's death.
The lawsuit claims Peterson's body had decomposed so badly during the year it had been in storage that an open casket funeral was not possible, nor was an autopsy possible to determine whether medical malpractice occurred.
“Jesse's death was not reported to her family until a year after her death, making it impossible to conduct an autopsy to determine whether medical malpractice played any role in her death,” the lawsuit states.
“When they remember her now, they don't remember who she was, they remember her in a body bag on a shelf,” Greenberg said of Peterson's family. “They're struggling to process what happened.”
(The-CNN-Wire & 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.)
