THE SUN
A WOMAN’S family is demanding answers after she was mistakenly declared dead, placed inside a body bag, and sent to a funeral home.
Janet Balducci, 82, was set to be embalmed when a worker discovered her alive and breathing inside the body bag.
Balducci was living at the Water’s Edge Rehabilitation & Nursing Center in Long Island, New York, when a nurse declared her dead on February 4, 2023.
However, once she arrived at the Casimir Funeral Home, an employee opened the body bag and discovered that she was “still breathing and had a pulse,” Peter DeNoto, the Balducci family lawyer, told The New York Post.
Emergency services were called and Janet was rushed to the hospital where she survived for a day but then died, said DeNoto.
Janet’s sons, Robert and Joseph Balducci, are now suing the nursing home and funeral home for allegations of negligence and wrongful death.
They’re hoping the lawsuit, filed with the Suffolk County Supreme Court, will answer their questions about how the error was allowed to happen, said DeNoto.
“Did the nurse follow the criteria for determining whether somebody is dead and did a doctor confirm what the nurse found?” he said, referring to some of the questions the family has been left with.
“There really is no excuse for putting a live person in a body bag and sending them to a facility for embalming.”
DeNoto said the case points to a larger problem of elder neglect at nursing homes, even when a family is highly involved in a case.
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