ELTINGVILLE, Staten Island (WABC) — A Staten Island family got the fright of their lives on Halloween when police showed up at their door with the tragic news that a woman with a beloved sister and daughter had been hit and killed by a car… not her.

This was a case of mistaken identity that took 18 hours to correct.

“My sister is a mental health patient,” said Sheila Nagengast, Denise Owen’s sister.

The door everyone feared came knocking.

“They said, ‘I’m sorry to inform you, but your sister was fatally killed in a car accident,'” Nagengast said.

Nagengast received the devastating news from NYPD detectives at 1:30 a.m. on Halloween morning.

They informed him that his younger sister, Denise Owen, 44, of New Dorp Beach, had been struck by a car on Hylan Boulevard and thrown into the air, fatally injured.

“They flew into the sky, landed on the pavement, and their faces were unrecognizable,” Nagengast said. “My question was: How did you identify my sister? They said there was some form of identification there, they were able to identify her.”

He was in shock for the next few hours, consenting to organ donation before heading to the hospital morgue.

Her sister suffered from schizophrenia, was homeless at times, and needed help with her mental health.

According to the NYPD Highway District Crash Investigation Team, an article was shared on Facebook and quickly spread among friends and family stating that Owen was walking against traffic when he was fatally struck by a Nissan Maxima.

“In my 35 years of handling accident cases, I’ve never experienced this confusion, never seen this confusion,” said attorney John D’Agostino.

Nagengast was meeting with D’Agostino, a local personal injury attorney, to file a wrongful death lawsuit for his sister when his phone rang.

It was Nagengast’s other sister who said she saw Owen alive at the 7-Eleven near the intersection where police said he was shot and killed.

“He FaceTimed me and my sister Denise, who was declared dead by the NYPD, the North Staten Island Hospital, the morgue where all her information and everyone else… the newspapers are located, is standing right in front of my sister… alive. and well,” Nagengast said.

“This takes us from a wrongful death action to a possible action of negligent infliction of emotional distress,” D’Agostino said.

The NYPD apologized to Nagengast and said they corrected the records, removed his sister’s name, and notified the correct family that the deceased was their loved one.

“Nobody should have to go through what I went through in the last 24 hours…nobody,” Nagengast said.

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