Father of misidentified woman says Ariz. hospital correctly ID’d patient but mixed up families

Family says hospital mixed up kin, not victims

PHOENIX — The father of a woman misidentified after a deadly Arizona traffic crash said Monday the hospital mixed up the families, not the victims.

Frank Cantu said the hospital used information provided by the families to correctly determine it was 19-year-old Abby Guerra who survived the July 18 crash — not his 21-year-old daughter, Marlena Cantu. But he said hospital staff mistakenly came to him and said the critically injured woman was his daughter.

Frank Cantu said Guerra was then assumed to be the woman killed at the scene.

A spokesman for St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment Monday night.

At a news conference earlier Monday, the hospital’s vice president of external affairs, Suzanne Pfister, said the patient wasn’t easily identified because she was badly injured and doctors were struggling to keep her alive.

“The hospital does not conduct fingerprinting nor do dental records in the middle of a trauma situation, because the overwhelming emphasis is on saving the patient’s life,” Pfister said.

She said the hospital identified the patient as Cantu after asking family members about recognizable marks, scars or bone breaks. She declined to say what features were used in the identification, citing the Guerra family’s request for privacy.

Sgt. Kevin Wood, Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman, added officers and hospital staff spent about five hours trying to identify the patient.

Frank Cantu said the family was asked for traits to easily identify the young women, and Guerra’s mother said her daughter had an identifiable mark on her chest.

Cantu said a hospital worker went to check the patient and returned to Cantu and told him the patient was his daughter.

“They talked to the wrong person,” he said.

Guerra’s family was then told their daughter had died at the scene, he said.

The mistake wasn’t discovered until Saturday — after the Maricopa County medical examiner’s office completed an autopsy and sought a comparison of the women’s dental records.

Cantu and Guerra were among a group of five friends from Ironwood High School in Glendale, near Phoenix, who were returning from Disneyland when the sport utility vehicle they were in blew a tire. The driver lost control, and the SUV rolled several times.

One of the five — 20-year-old Tyler Parker — was taken to St. Joseph’s, where he died the next day. A woman believed to be Cantu and another person suffered head trauma and were also taken to St. Joseph’s. Another woman, believed to be Guerra, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Guerra’s family spent the past week planning her funeral, and teammates from her University of Evansville soccer team in Indiana were preparing to travel to Phoenix to attend the services. On Saturday, they rushed to her bedside after learning of the mix-up.

Guerra, a nursing major, was scheduled to begin her sophomore year at the University of Evansville this fall.

The Cantu Family said they have established a memorial fund where donations can be made in Marlena’s honor.

Frank Cantu said earlier Monday he’s not blaming anyone for what happened yet, but he hopes something can be done to prevent similar mistakes in the future.

“We want to find a better solution,” he said. “We don’t want this to happen to anybody else.”

Right now, he said, he just can’t believe his daughter is gone.

“It’s unbearable right now,” he said. “To lose her, it’s just losing a big part of my life.”

A similar ID mix-up following a 2006 traffic crash in Indiana involving two women led to a new law in that state. It requires coroners to use one of four methods to identify a dead person: fingerprints, DNA analysis, dental records or positive identification by an immediate family member.

In that case, the two young women were similar in appearance, and the family of the one who died had kept vigil for five weeks at the bedside of the survivor, Whitney Cerak, believing she was their daughter. Cerak’s family had buried 22-year-old Laura VanRyn’s body, believing she was Whitney.