There have been some new revelations in the tragic case of Lynne Spalding, the 57-year-old woman who was found dead in a stairwell at S.F. General after going missing for over two weeks from her hospital room. Spalding disappeared on September 21 after being admitted and getting treatment for an infection. After she was reported missing, it took the Sheriff's Department a full nine days to conduct a full search of the hospital, on September 30, and they still managed to miss the locked stairwell where a hospital engineer found Spalding dead another 8 days later, on October 8.
There are also reports of another hospital employee stepping over Spalding's unconscious body during that first week of October. It's unclear how or why that person didn't immediately do something about it.
Spalding went missing after spending two days in the hospital, and though foul play has been ruled out, the cause of death remains under investigation. She was, perhaps, not in a clear frame of mind when she wandered into the emergency stairwell, whose doors are locked from the outside and would have triggered a fire alarm when opened. In total, she lying there for 17 days, and Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi has apologized for the fact that his department did such a shoddy job trying to find her.
