Missing person

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Thursday, August 8, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | Four Star B | NEWS | Page A01

Six weeks after he was reported missing, Edward Gee Jr.’s family finally knows where he is: buried in a New York cemetery as “Edward Lee Jr.”
Mystery surrounds his last days. Gee, 32, died at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center on June 20. The hospital had his identification, sent his relatives a bill for $278 for emergency room services on July 7, and told them he was discharged June 27.
But Gee had died June 20, the day he had entered the hospital, and was buried on July 9 in a potter’s field in the city under the wrong name.
“Whatever person or entity is responsible for this shocking scenario must be held accountable for the outrage that the family has suffered and continues to suffer,” said William J. Ewing, a lawyer retained by the family.
The hospital’s spokeswoman was unaware of the situation. But she said, “There is no way we are sweeping this under the rug.
“Something happened, and we want to get to the bottom of this,” said Leslie Bernstein, the spokeswoman. “It is hospital policy to make every possible effort to notify next of kin when somebody comes into the hospital, certainly when somebody dies. . . . We regret that we were unable to notify next of kin in Mr. Gee’s case.”
Ewing said Gee had a wallet containing his driver’s license, Social Security card, student identification card, and Army veteran’s card when he was taken into the hospital.
Bernstein said Wednesday that she could not explain the mix-up until the hospital had a chance to investigate.
Gee was suffering from cardiac arrest brought on by an overdose of cocaine when he was brought in that day, Bernstein said. The cause of death was acute cocaine intoxication, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office.
Although the hospital did not notify the family of the death, it sent two medical services bills totaling $510, including $50 for “acetaminophen (Tylenol)” in the July 7 bill.
Asked how the hospital could tell the family Gee had been discharged June 27 when he had died seven days earlier, Bernstein replied: “I don’t understand that at all. This was on the bill. I don’t have an answer for it. I don’t know. The hospital has a regret here, at the least, and they are investigating exactly what went on.”
Complicating matters, Bernstein said, was the lack of a police report. It was unclear when the city’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) brought Gee into the hospital or where they brought him from, she said. In most cases, the only way to find that out would be the police report, she added. But an EMS spokeswoman said that information should be available from Gee’s hospital records.
After saying she would check the billing discrepancy and specifics on how Gee’s identification was mixed up, Bernstein later said she would no longer comment on the case because, “It’s a confidentiality issue.”
The mystery started coming unraveled when the family received the first bill from Columbia Presbyterian on July 23, he said.
Borakove said the New York Police Department was responsible under state law for verifying the identification of anyone for whom a hospital could not find the next of kin.
That is not necessarily the case, especially if the person was never in police custody, said Sgt. Peter Berry, a police spokesman. He said he did not know about the case and would need time to research whether the department ever came in contact with Gee.
The family referred all questions to Ewing.
“It is a sad commentary on what can happen in a metropolitan hospital. People do get lost,” Ewing said. “The family tried desperately through the police to find this man and couldn’t. So did the police.”
Pete DeLuise, a manager in the parts department at Englewood’s Town Motors, where Gee had worked for about a year, said he came to work Thursday, June 20.
“He didn’t show up for work that Friday,” DeLuise said. “He didn’t pick up his paycheck that day. Then his family called us about a week later to tell us he was missing.”
Englewood police Capt. C. Kenneth Tinsley said Gee’s sister Jimmie, his mother, and his father, Edward Sr., came to the Englewood Police Department June 28 to report that he was missing.
Tinsley declined to discuss the police investigation, however.
Bergen County Undersheriff Jay Alpert said the Sheriff’s Department’s missing-persons unit started working with Englewood on the case on July 11. Three days later, they received a report that someone saw Gee in the area of 138th Street in New York, Alpert said.
Investigators, armed with Gee’s fingerprint for comparison, were also sent to the New York City morgue about that time because several unidentified bodies that fit Gee’s general description were reported to be there, Alpert said.
But Gee had been buried July 9 at Hart Island, where unclaimed bodies are sent, under the misreading of his name after the medical examiner could not verify his identification. His family identified a photograph of Gee’s body Monday at the Medical Examiner’s Office in Manhattan.

Keywords: MISSING PERSON; DEATH; NEW YORK CITY

ID: 17351886 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)