A California family’s year-long search for their daughter, believing her to have gone missing after she was released from the hospital against her doctor’s advice, ended with the tragic discovery that she had been dead and decomposing in the hospital morgue all along, according to a lawsuit filed earlier this month.
Jessie Peterson, 31, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 10 and was hospitalized at Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, a suburb of Sacramento, California, in April 2023 after suffering an associated diabetic attack, according to a negligence lawsuit filed by her mother and sister in Sacramento County Superior Court.
According to the lawsuit, the hospital told Peterson’s family that she was discharged two days later, against medical advice.
When Peterson, 31, could not be located, her family began a “relentless” search and reported her missing to the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, according to the lawsuit.
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Jessie Peterson, 31, had been lying dead in the hospital morgue for a year while her family believed she was missing, according to a negligence lawsuit filed by her family earlier this month. (Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office)
A year later, it was discovered that Peterson had never been released from the hospital.
Detectives notified Peterson’s family on April 12 that her body had been found at Mercy San Juan Medical Center, where it had been stored in an “off-site warehouse morgue” and left “to decay for over a year,” according to the lawsuit.
“At this point, Jesse’s body was too advanced in decomposition to permit an open casket funeral, and Jesse’s fingerprints could not be obtained as a keepsake,” the lawsuit states. Jesse’s body was also “too discolored to identify any tattoos,” the lawsuit states.
Peterson’s death certificate, which was issued more than a year after her death, states that she died of cardiac arrest at age 31.
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But because there was no notification of her death for a year, an autopsy couldn’t be performed to determine whether medical malpractice caused her death, the lawsuit says.
Peterson’s family is now seeking more than $5 million in damages.
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Dignity Health, which operates Mercy San Juan Medical Center, did not immediately respond to Fox Digital’s request for comment on the matter.
