'We Thought We Were Doing The Right Thing': Jasper's Restaurant in Maryland Continued to Serve Food With Dead Customer In Bathroom The woman appeared to have died of a heart attack.
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A restaurant in a Maryland town remained open and served food for hours after a woman was found dead in one of its customer bathrooms last week, according to NBC News.
The restaurant, Jasper's, which is located in Largo, Maryland, has faced backlash for continuing to serve food for the remainder of the evening.
"At the moment we thought we were doing the right thing, and we realized maybe we were wrong," Miguel Perea, one of the managers of Jasper's, told Fox 5 of Washington, D.C.
The woman, Verna Winn, reportedly was there with family and friends to plan a family reunion.
She went to the restroom, where she likely died from a heart attack — and was found when his cousin went to check on her, Verna's husband told Fox.
NBC reported local police arrived "within minutes," according to one of the restaurant's owners, Fred Rosenthal, and responded to the call at about 6:40 pm.
Because she was pronounced dead on the scene, a coroner had to come to retrieve her body, which did not happen until around 9 p.m. — while the restaurant was still serving food, and Verna's body was in a closed-off bathroom.
"That was my soul mate, my life partner, my best friend, my lover," husband Craig Winn told Fox.
"I just immediately jumped up and ran into the restroom and saw my wife lying on the floor and that was the last image of my wife. Lying on the stall floor in the lady's restroom," Winn added to the outlet.
But he said he doesn't blame the restaurant. "Don't indict [them]... I don't think the restaurant could improvise on how to deal with a situation like that," Winn added. He further said just wished a manager, not just servers, had stopped to ask them what they could do to help out.
People on social media have expressed anger about how the restaurant handled the situation:
A WOMAN DIES INSIDE OF A BATHROOM AT A POPULAR RESTAURANT NAMED (JASPERS) AND SOME PEOPLE ARE FURIOUS. pic.twitter.com/A8mufywfGT
— Dmv Blossom (@DmvBlossom) October 13, 2022
Rosenthal discussed the way they handled Verna's body with NBC.
"Hindsight is 20/20, we didn't know it was going to take the coroner two hours to collect the body," Rosenthal said Friday. "If we did, we would've stopped seating people. We were trying to keep it as respectful as possible and not cause a scene," he added.
Jasper also released a statement Thursday that said it "contacted county authorities and followed their protocol and procedure. Under the authorities' guidance, we closed the area to patrons until all emergency services could arrive and followed the direction of the authorities."
