Mom is Told Daughter Died by Mistake: Lori Baker is 'So Relieved'

By Daniel Distant, Christian Post Reporter Friday, March 21, 2014

A mom was told her daughter died in a particularly gruesome manner last week by Pierce County, Washington state officials, and she grieved for three days before being informed that it. Lori Baker believed that her estranged daughter Samantha Rose Kennedy had been struck by a car and killed, but it turned out that it was a different girl.

The mom was told that her 24-year-old daughter was dead from a car collision March 14 as she was walking along the highway. Samantha Rose had been reported missing since she was 16, and officials erroneously used that report to identify a different woman that was slain. A chaplain came to deliver the bad news to Baker.

"I believed what they told me. That my daughter was dead," the mother told King 5 News.

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Baker believed so strongly that her estranged daughter had died that she informed family members and had even started writing an obituary. Three days later, however, the same chaplain visited the grieving mom to let her know the Pierce County Medical Examiner had made a huge mistake.

"He said, 'I'm sorry, but there's been mistake,'" the mom recounted. "I cussed. I said, 'What do you do? Just go around telling family members they are dead and they say, oops, my mistake?'"

Medical Examiner Thomas Clark was responsible for the mistake. He has publically apologized for causing Baker and her family so much anguish, but the mom will not accept his apology.

"We work in a gray area," Dr. Clark told King 5 News. "We did what we normally do. We thought it would be sufficient, but in retrospect, it wasn't."

Baker is just glad that her daughter is still alive. The real family of the deceased was informed by officials after the incident.