Death mix-up leaves Staten Island family in anguish on Halloween morning
44-year-old Denise Owen was incorrectly identified as the victim of a deadly crash on Halloween morning
ELTINGVILLE, Staten Island (WABC) -- A family on Staten Island got the scare of their lives on Halloween, when police arrived at their door to deliver tragic news that a woman -- a beloved sister and daughter -- was killed after being hit by a car... except it wasn't her.
It was a case of mistaken identity that took 18 anguishing hours to correct.
"My sister is a mental health person," said Sheila Nagengast, the sister of Denise Owen.
She got the door knock that everyone dreads.
"They said, 'I'm sorry to inform you but your sister has been killed fatally in a car accident,'" Nagengast said.
Nagengast got the devastating news from NYPD detectives at 1:30 a.m. on the morning of Halloween.
They informed her that her little sister, 44-year-old Denise Owen of New Dorp Beach, was hit by a car on Hylan Boulevard and thrown into the air, suffering fatal injuries.
"They flew into the sky, landed on the pavement and their face was unrecognizable," Nagengastsaid. "My question was: how did you identify my sister? They said that there was some sort of ID there, that they were able to identify her."
She was in shock for the next few hours, consenting to organ donation before rushing to the hospital morgue.
Her sister suffered from schizophrenia, was at times homeless and in need of mental health help.
Word spread fast with friends and family, sharing the news on Facebook, and sharing an article stated that Owen was walking against traffic when she was fatally struck by a Nissan Maxima, according to NYPD's Highway District Collision Investigation Squad.
"In 35 years of handling accident cases, I've never had this mix-up, I've never seen this mix-up," said attorney Jonathan D'Agostino.
Nagengast was meeting with D'Agostino, a local injury attorney, to file her sister's wrongful death suit, when her phone rang.
It was Nagengast's other sister who said that she spotted Owen alive at the 7-Eleven near the intersection where police said she had been struck and killed.
"She FaceTimed me, and my sister Denise, who was pronounced dead by NYPD, Staten Island Hospital North, the morgue who has all her information and everybody else... the newspapers, is standing directly in front of my sister... alive and well," Nagengast said.
"It takes us from a wrongful death action to a possible action for negligent infliction of emotional distress," D'Agostino said.
The NYPD apologized to Nagengast, and said they corrected the records and have taken her sister's name off, and informed the correct family that it was their loved one who died.
"Nobody should go through what I've been through in the last 24 hours... nobody," Nagengast said.
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