Are you about to eat? Don’t start if you’re going to read this.
A rat infestation at Providence Hospital in Washington, D.C, was so bad that the rodents were entering corpses through the vagina and anus, a former worker says.
Doris Kennard won a $237,000 judgment for emotional distress against the hospital on July 18, court records show. A lawyer for the hospital said “we vehemently disagree with the verdict” and will appeal.
In a stomach-churning interview (above) with Fox News in D.C., Kennard recounted some of the details from her stint as a contract worker in the hospital morgue several years ago: Rats chewed through the body bags to feast on the cadavers. In 2010, one rat even attacked her, landing her in the hospital.
Kennard, whose job was in part to clean the deceased, said in documents that she pulled what she believed to be the string of a “feminine product” out of a cadaver and it turned out to be a rat, which then bit her.
She told the station that the problem was so intense that she could not get someone else to work with her.
Kennard theorized that the morgue’s coolers broke down, so bodies warmed and perhaps attracted the vermin from a nearby hospital trash compactor. Kennard’s lawyer, Gregory Lattimer, accused the hospital of a coverup in the report and said the infestation has persisted for decades.
A hospital rep told HuffPost on Friday, “The District of Columbia Department of Health and two of their field inspectors toured our facilities today and found absolutely no evidence that would support the claims that were alleged.”
The hospital gift shop was closed by health inspectors in January after they spotted rodent droppings and a “bag of food chewed on by some sort of pest,” D.C. outlet WUSA 9 reported.
Kennard originally filed the suit in December 2012, according to records. An attorney for the hospital asked for a mistrial on July 17 but was rejected.
The hospital’s attorney, Hugh W. Farrell with Farrell & Gunderson, offered the following statement:
We vehemently disagree with the verdict and will file an appeal. At the time of the alleged incident, a thorough investigation was completed by the Hospital and the District of Columbia Department of Health which revealed no truth to the allegations. There was absolutely no evidence of the alleged rat activity. We look forward to correcting this verdict on appeal.
