This week in gruesome and depressing Florida lawsuits: A Panhandle woman has filed suit against a local ambulance company for allegedly flushing her miscarried child down the toilet.
Jennifer Ward says she called Lifeguard Ambulance Service last February when she started to miscarry, and that when the EMTs arrived they cut her umbilical cord and flushed the remains of her baby down the drain. She was left with "emotional distress and mental suffering," her suit says.
Ward and her husband, Charles, live in Milton, in Santa Rosa County, according to the suit, which was posted this morning by Courthouse News Service.
On February 20, 2010, Ward was 16 weeks pregnant with a baby the couple had already named Nikko.
That night, Ward experienced complications and called for an ambulance. When they arrived, she was on the toilet and had already miscarried her baby, she says.
An EMT entered the bathroom, and "elected to cut a protruding umbilical cord," the suit says. Then another "employee ... flushed Nikko's remains down the toilet."
That deprived (the Wards) the chance to bury their miscarried child, they say, and left "Nikko's remains to decompose in a septic tank."
The couple don't specify how much compensation they want from the ambulance company, but they say the damages exceed $15,000.
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