Still, despite the announcement, questions swirled about how Spalding – a British native who worked in hospitality sales – could have ended up in a remote stairwell on the fourth floor. Spalding had entered the hospital on Sept. 19 with a urinary tract infection, and was last seen on Sept. 21. A friend said she had been feeling disoriented on her medication, but a doctor on Wednesday said her condition had been improving.
"We have no idea how this happened," Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Todd May. "We are shaken to our core. What happened at the hospital is horrible. Our staff is devastated.”
Hospital staff and sheriff's deputies took no questions from reporters, and did not explain the circumstances of her death, including the timing until Tuesday morning when she was found by a member of the engineering staff on a routine check – 17 days after she walked off from her hospital room. Authorities also did not offer an explanation as to how a missing patient could be lost for more than two weeks only to be found dead in a hospital stairwell. The stairwell is a fire exit that has an alarm on it, and is locked from the outside and exits onto hospital grounds.