Disturbing news emerged from a North Miami nursing home this week after a decomposing body was found hidden in a facility closet. The discovery was made on Monday at North Dade Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, nearly two weeks after 71-year-old Elin Etienne, a patient recovering from a brain aneurysm, went missing from the same establishment. According to CBS12, local police issued a missing person alert for Etienne on August 23, just a day following his disappearance.
Etienne's family, in the throes of their search, was not informed by nursing home administrators about the finding. It wasn't until an anonymous tipster called them that they became aware of the body's recovery. "They said they found him in a closet and he was already decomposing, and they refused to let us see the body," Ruth Keisha Etienne, the man's granddaughter, recounted in a statement obtained by U.S. News & World Report. "And we tried to speak to the nursing home people, but they refused to speak to us. They don’t want to talk to us. I wonder why?”
In the aftermath of the discovery, the nursing home has declined to comment. Further, the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner's Office indicated today that the body has not been officially identified. Police have confirmed that a death investigation is underway, yet many details surrounding the circumstances of Etienne's disappearance and how his body ended up in a closet remain elusive.
Following the morbid incident, the state nursing home regulators were contacted for a response but did not immediately provide a statement. The case has cast a grim spotlight over the safety and management protocols in long-term care facilities, leaving the Etienne family and community members alike to reconcile with the silent hallways of North Dade Nursing & Rehabilitation Center where answers are seemingly trapped behind closed doors, unnoticed until tragedy strikes a most personal blow.
