Missouri family finds woman hours after she 'died'

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CUBA, Mo. (KTVI) — The Ferguson family in Cuba, Missouri, recently got a dreaded knock at the door from sheriff’s deputies with news that a relative was killed in a car crash.

It happened after a hit-and-run crash on Route 3 near Interstate 55 in St. Clair County.

A pickup truck reportedly ran a red light in the early morning hours of May 22, colliding with a Ford Escape. A man in the vehicle was seriously injured; his sister was killed.

Authorities believed that woman was Danika Ferguson.

“ … Sheriff’s deputies at our door at 5:17 a.m. (on) May 22, telling us that our daughter was dead,” Mae Ferguson told affiliate KTVI-TV, recounting the horrible memory. “They sent that body out of SLU Hospital to the city medical examiner’s office with a toe tag reading Danika Ferguson.”

For the next 10 hours, Mae and her husband Charlie arranged for organ donation, made funeral plans, and told their grandkids, who they were watching because their daughter was relocating to Steeleville.

Meanwhile, another family — who happens to be distantly related to the Fergusons — began wondering where their loved one was.

Nichole Kent’s family said they were told a relative, Danika Ferguson, had been killed in the accident. But when they saw news coverage of the accident and spotted Kent’s car, they began to uncover the tragic truth.

Kent’s mother, Cynthia Mobley, said the family tried to get ahold of Kent, to no avail. Then, Mobley contacted the medical examiner.

“I told the city morgue that they have an identity problem,” Mobley explained during an earlier interview with KTVI. “I told her you need to look at that body you have down there and tell me if it has a sleeve tattoo. I said, ‘And there’s going to be a flower on one side,’ and she says, ‘a Hello Kitty?’ And I said, ‘You’ve got Nichole Kent.’”

With the body correctly identified, Ferguson’s parents began frantically searching for their daughter, Danika.

She was, meanwhile, very much alive. A family friend found Danika asleep in her new apartment — her phone battery had died, which is why her family couldn’t reach her.

“They said, ‘Your mother thinks you are dead! This county thinks you’re dead! Call your mom!’” she said.

“I will never forget the feeling that my daughter was dead,” Mae said. “And the thing is, we have a happy ending!”

Saint Louis University Hospital declined to comment on the initial misidentification, but the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office wrote a long letter to KTVI offering its apology to the family, even though it wasn’t the sheriff’s mistake.

The letter added that Sheriff Darin Layman has, “ … directed all death notifications to be forwarded directly to him,” and that, “All requests for a death notification outside our county will now require a written message.”

But Mae believes the sheriff has nothing to apologize for, adding that a hospital chaplain gave her an explanation for the mistake.

“What he told me is the other (surviving) crash victim had said, ‘Where’s Danika?’ and from his records, they assumed it was Danika (who had died in the crash).”

Kent’s sister, Ashley, told KTVI she believes Kent or their brother may have had Danika’s ID in their vehicle and were trying to return it.

“I know what I live with,” Mae said. “I can’t imagine what they live with every day.”

“Every single morning, I wake up and I think my daughter’s gone and then it kicks in that, ‘No, wait, she’s OK; I have her still,’ she added. “She’s my baby. She always will be.”