The family of former model Rebecca Zeni is suing the company that runs the Georgia nursing home she was staying at after an autopsy revealed she was basically eaten alive by mites. An investigation into her 2015 death revealed that she likely had "hundreds of millions of mites" living underneath her skin when she died. The investigation was conducted by local news station WXIA.
The station enlisted Dr. Kris Sperry to look over Zeni’s autopsy report. Sperry told the station that her autopsy was “one of the most horrendous things I’ve ever seen in my career as a forensic pathologist.” The autopsy report listed the 93-year-old's cause of death as “septicemia due to crusted scabies.”
Officials from the Georgia Department of Public Health were notified of the scabies outbreaks in 2013 and 2015 but did not send anybody to inspect the facility. 35 residents and staff members were exposed to the outbreak, but the nursing home did very little to help the sick patients, including Zeni.
Stephen Chance, an attorney for the family, said that Zeni's condition was so bad that staff members were told they should “not to touch Zeni’s hand.”
“There was a conversation at this nursing home with a health care provider about being careful about touching Ms. Zeni’s hand for fear that it might fall off her body.”
Sperry said that he "would seriously consider calling this a homicide by neglect."