US hospital told family their daughter had checked out when in fact she’d died

Family of Jessie Peterson, 31, spent a year searching for her before learning hospital had shipped body to storage facility

Jessie Peterson's family spent a year searching for her after they were told that she had checked herself out of a California hospital against medical advice - before they learned that she had been dead all along.

The 31-year-old died in the care of Mercy San Juan medical center in Sacramento in April 2023. The hospital shipped her body to a storage facility and did not inform her mother and sisters. The family only learned her fate the following April after months of trying to find her, according to a civil lawsuit against the hospital.