N.J. Family: Why Was Late Mother's Severed Hand Left Behind At Crash Scene?

A grieving New Jersey family wants answers months after their mother's severed hand was found at her traffic accident scene, their attorney said.

Susan Pfost's two children, Justin and Brittany, discovered the hand two days after the 2015 accident when they went to the Winslow Township scene to erect a roadside memorial. The mother's severed hand was there, still wearing her engagement and wedding rings, according to Theresa Grabowski, the attorney for the family.

Grabowski said her clients are considering taking legal action against authorities who, she believes, may have mishandled the crash aftermath.

The family is considering suing the various investigators involved in the crash for failing to perform a proper autopsy, which she said has left them traumatized. They even wonder if something about the way she died — perhaps a medical event that caused the crash — was missed.

"I have been trying to get the matter resolved," Grabowski told Patch on Friday. "The [authorities] are simply not accepting responsibility."

Winslow Township police declined to comment, although Eric Riso, a lawyer for Winslow, was quoted in Philly Voice as saying he didn't think the township did anything wrong.

Efforts to obtain comment from Gerald Feigin, the Camden County medical examiner who pronounced Pfost dead, were unsuccessful.

Pfost, 56, of Williamstown, was killed around 2 p.m. on Dec. 14, 2015 when her Saturn ran off Winslow Road in Winslow Township, crashed into a utility pole and overturned.

Grabowski said Pfost lost her hand in the accident, but Winslow Township police and other crash scene investigators believed she lost fingers — even though dozens of pictures were taken at the site, and of Pfost.

"You can see in the photograph [of Pfost] that it's the hand," Grabowski said.

Later — but before the hand was discovered — the family learned the whole hand had been severed. But they didn't learn that from police or the medical examiner, Grabowski said.

They learned it from the funeral home.

"Everybody was just so freaked out," she said.

Grabowski said various reports on the incident made no mention of the severed hand. The Philly Voice noted a report from Patrick Daley, an investigator with the Medical Examiner’s Office shared by Camden, Salem and Gloucester counties, that merely concluded that “crash under investigation by the Winslow PD, body removed from the scene by Daley for examination by Feigin.”

The Philly Voice noted that Feigin, Daley's boss, is the pathologist in the Brendan Creato case in Camden County in which the boy’s dad, DJ Creato, is accused of murdering his son. Feigin and his office have been criticized by independent experts involved in that case.

Grabowski said she's aware of the Creato case and said "it's a worry" that similar criticisms could be made about her own case. The family, she said, is looking for not just an apology but also some sort of finding that tells the true story about the crash.

"Their primary concern is that they don't want another family to go through this," she said.

Facebook photo used with family's permission.