The Staten Island family left distraught over a death mix-up after a woman was mistakenly identified as the victim of a fatal accident

ELTINGVILLE, Staten Island (WABC) — A Staten Island family experienced the scare of their lives on Halloween when police showed up at their door with the tragic news that a woman – a beloved sister and a beloved daughter – had been killed after being hit by a car…but that wasn't the case. Not her.

It was a case of mistaken identity that took 18 agonizing hours to correct.

“My sister is a mentally healthy person,” said Sheila Nagengast, Denise Owen’s sister.

She got the knock on the door that everyone fears.

“They said, 'I'm sorry to tell you, but your sister was killed in a car accident,'” Nagengast said.

Nagengast received the devastating news from NYPD investigators at 1:30 a.m. on the morning of Halloween.

They told her that her little sister, 44-year-old Denise Owen of New Dorp Beach, was hit by a car on Hylan Boulevard and thrown into the air, sustaining fatal injuries.

“They flew into the sky, landed on the sidewalk and their face was unrecognizable,” Nagengast said. “My question was: How did you identify my sister? They said there was some kind of ID card so they could identify her.”

She was in shock for the next few hours and agreed to organ donation before rushing to the hospital morgue.

Her sister suffered from schizophrenia, was temporarily homeless and needed mental health help.

According to the NYPD's Highway District Collision Investigation Squad, word spread quickly among friends and family, sharing the news on Facebook and posting an article saying Owen was running against traffic when she was fatally struck by a Nissan Maxima was hit.

“In the 35 years I've been handling accident cases, I've never had a mixup like this, I've never seen this mixup,” said attorney John D'Agostino.

Nagengast was meeting with D'Agostino, a local personal injury attorney, to file her sister's wrongful death lawsuit when her phone rang.

It was Nagengast's other sister who said she saw Owen alive at the 7-Eleven near the intersection where police said she was struck and killed.

“She FaceTimed me, and my sister Denise, who was declared dead by the NYPD, Staten Island Hospital North, the morgue that has all her information and everyone else…the newspapers, is standing right in front of my sister…alive. “And good,” said Nagengast.

“It takes us from a wrongful death lawsuit to a potential lawsuit for negligent infliction of emotional distress,” D'Agostino said.

The NYPD apologized to Nagengast and said they had corrected the record and removed her sister's name and informed the correct family that it was their loved one who died.

“No one should go through what I’ve been through in the last 24 hours…no one,” Nagengast said.

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