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HUP ‘Jane Doe’ identified

After four months lying alone and unidentified on a hospital bed, the patient has a name: Michelle Bateman.

After four months lying in a coma at the University of Pennsylvania, the patient has a name: Michelle Bateman.
After four months lying in a coma at the University of Pennsylvania, the patient has a name: Michelle Bateman.Read more

After four months lying alone and unidentified on a hospital bed, the patient has a name: Michelle Bateman.

"She is a sweetheart, she's got a heart of gold," her sister Sandi Williams said in a phone call Monday after their mother visited Michelle at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Someone had spotted her photograph and a story about an unconscious "Jane Doe" in Saturday's Inquirer, and called someone else, and eventually reached her mother, Williams said.

The hospital said the woman's identity had been confirmed but that her mother was not ready to talk publicly about it.

She released this statement through the hospital:

"We have been looking for her and we have been overwhelmed trying to find her. Knowing where she is and knowing that she is OK is enough . . . that is most important to us."

Bateman, who is 43 years old and lived in the city, went into cardiac arrest on the evening of Aug. 13 on a bench in the park adjacent to Tioga station on the Market-Frankford line, in the Kensington neighborhood.

Paramedics arrived within minutes after the 911 call but it is unclear how long her heart had been stopped, depriving her brain of oxygen.

She was taken to the emergency room at Aria Health's Frankford campus and transferred a few hours later to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

But she never regained consciousness and has minimal brain activity.