- A Boston hospital discarded the remains of a premature baby with soiled linen in 2020, WBTS reported.
- Everleigh Victoria McCarthy's parents sued Brigham and Women's Hospital on Thursday.
- "We don't want anybody else to go through this," Everleigh's mother Alana Ross said.
A Boston couple is suing one of the city's most prestigious hospitals after their premature baby's body was "probably mistaken as soiled linen" and thrown out, police said, according to WBTS.
WBTS reported that Alana Ross and Daniel McCarthy, the baby's parents, filed a lawsuit on Thursday over the August 2020 incident at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
"We don't want anybody else to go through this," Ross, 37 told The New York Times. "We want the hospital to be held accountable. We want them to fix this."
The couple's child, Everleigh Victoria McCarthy, was born on July 25, 2020, and developed massive bleeding in her brain, the Times reported. She was born three months premature.
Less than two weeks later, on August 6, doctors told the couple that Everleigh would not survive, and she was taken off a ventilator.
Ross and McCarthy called a funeral home and began planning a memorial, but when the home tried to get Everleigh's body, the hospital said they couldn't find it.
The couple filed a police report on August 11, 2020, and an investigation found that it was likely that Everleigh's body was thrown out with dirty linens from the morgue four days prior, WBTS reported.
Boston police in the report said the baby's body "was probably mistaken as soiled linen," the New York Times reported.
Her body was taken to the morgue as the couple prepared the memorial. However, the lawsuit alleges that a hospital employee put her body on a table that was not designated "for the delivery of infant remains to the morgue."
Ross told the Times that hearing the news was like her daughter "died all over again."
The family is not suing for any specified amount. Everleigh's body has not been found despite investigators tracing where the body could have ended up and searching through medical debris that was covered in blood and human waste, WBTS reported.
The Times reported that a nurse who took Everleigh's body to the morgue did not call the hospital back for their own investigation and police also said the hospital did not give them a "complete video" of what happened at the time her body was taken to the morgue or when they realized she was missing.
"Having accepted the fact that she was going to pass away was one thing," McCarthy, 38 told the Times. "I never thought that I would have to accept the fact that I would have to go to bed every night not knowing where she is."
The hospital did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment but Dr. Sunil Eappen, Brigham and Women's Hospital's chief medical officer, told the Times they offered their "deepest sympathies and most sincere apologies to the Ross and McCarthy family for their loss and the heartbreaking circumstances surrounding it."
