82-year-old woman found alive in funeral home after being pronounced dead and placed in a body bag for 2 hours
Janet Balducci
Source: Ghanaija
An 82-year-old woman, Janet Balducci, has been found alive in a funeral home in New York after being pronounced dead and placed in a body bag for two hours. Her family are now demanding answers after after she was found to be breathing two hours later at the funeral home.
Janet, according to local media reports, was thought to have died mid-morning on February 4, 2023 at the Water’s Edge Rehab and Nursing Center in Port Jefferson on New York’s Long Island.
And her family, Balducci’s two sons, Robert and Joseph Balducci, are demanding answers as to how the mix-up occurred in what has been termed as ‘extreme and outrageous conduct’ in a lawsuit filed by the family which is taking on a two-pronged approach.
The sons are suing for what they allege is the premature and wrongful death of their mother.
The family, reports say, believe that staff at the care home both declared Balducci prematurely deceased but then also contributed to her actual death by failing to diagnose a deep vein thrombosis, which they allege occurred as nursing home workers stood by and did nothing to help treat her.
The family’s lawyer reportedly said the Janet’s sons are ‘horrified’ by what happened and have to live with the sickening reality their mother ‘was placed in a body bag alive.’
‘I think the case is more emblematic of what happens when elderly people go into these homes,’ lawyer Peter DeNoto indicated, adding that ‘They don’t have an advocate to keep track of what’s happening,’ lawyer DeNoto, told The Independent.
‘Did the nurse follow the criteria for determining whether somebody is dead and did a doctor confirm what the nurse found?’ he asks.
‘There really is no excuse for putting a live person in a body bag and sending them to a facility for embalming,’ DeNoto also told the New York Post.
Following the shocking incident, Suffolk County police, the New York State Department of Health, and the New York Attorney General’s Office for investigation opened a case, but the findings over what happened have not been disclosed, reports say.
