Missouri Family Spent 10 Hours Believing Daughter Was Dead After Police Wrongly ID Car Crash Victim

A Missouri family is holding their daughter a little tighter after an “identity problem” at the city morgue led them to believe she was dead for the better part of a day.

Back on May 22, Mae and Charlie Ferguson got a knock on their door “at 5:17 in the morning” from police informing them that their daughter Danika had died in a hit and run car accident. According to Fox 2, for the next 10 hours, the devastated parents began organizing funeral arrangements and an organ donation, and even told their grandchildren, the kids of Danika, that their mother had died.

However, it turns out that Danika was not only still very much alive and well, but not even anywhere near the crash!

Cynthia Mobley began to raise suspicion over the identity of the poor individual who lost their life in the fiery car crash after she noticed her daughter Nichole Kent’s car in reports of the incident — and couldn’t get ahold of her. She told Fox 2 earlier this month:

“I told the city morgue that they have an identity problem. I told [the medical examiner], ‘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.’”

Ugh, could you imagine going through all this? What a devastating roller coaster of emotions. When the Fergusons were notified, it should have been an immediate relief — but Mae couldn’t get ahold of her own daughter, who was mistaken for the true victim!

Thankfully she was eventually found asleep at her new apartment with a dead phone battery, according to the outlet. Once a family friend told her the gravity of what was going on around her, she quickly made her status known:

“I’m alive. They said, ‘Your mother thinks you’re dead, this county thinks you’re dead, call your mom!’”

Apparently, the mixup happened because Danika and Nichole are distant relatives, and according to Nichole’s sister, someone in the vehicle had Danika’s ID at the time of the crash:

“She lost her ID a couple months back, and I guess my sister and my little brother had it, and they were going to give it back to her.”

What a heartbreaking happenstance…

Mae explained that a hospital worker informed her that a survivor in the crash was asking, “Where’s Danika?’ leading investigators to believe she was the one who had lost her life.

But even knowing the truth doesn’t stop her body from having been scarred by that information. Mae shared with the outlet:

“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’s my baby. She always will be.”

It’s hard to call the situation a relief — poor Nichole sadly did die. We can’t even begin to imagine how many emotions both families have been feeling.

Fox 2 shared that Sheriff Darin Layman was not considered at fault for the mixup, but noted he did offer an official apology and requested all death notifications to be sent through him in the future, and that they will “also require a written message.” Watch more (below):