Police are investigating how the body of a dead baby that tumbled out of a pile of dirty Minnesota hospital laundry ever wound up in the sheets in the first place.
A worker at Crothall Laundry Services was preparing the sheets for wash when the baby’s body, outfitted with diaper and hospital tag, tumbled forth, The Associated Press reported. The baby was wrapped in lines from Regions Hospital in St. Paul, 40 miles away, AP said.
Laundry workers called the hospital, and officials responded to retrieve the body. AP reported the baby was a stillborn boy, about 22 weeks old, and had been wrapped in hospital lines to transport to the morgue. Officials still don’t know how the baby wound up in the dirty laundry pile, and police Wednesday were still seeking answers, AP said.
“This was a terrible mistake, and we are deeply sorry,” said Chris Boese, chief nursing officer at Regions Hospital, as reported in AP. “We have processes in place that should have prevented this but did not. We are working to identify the gap in our system and to make sure this does not happen again.”
AP reported that the hospital delivers about 2,500 annually. Of those, about two are stillborn each month. Hospital officials said they’d never before lost a baby’s body, AP reported.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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