Maryland restaurant continues to serve customers after Black woman dies in bathroom stall, her husband speaks out

“Once we finished, we all got our check and everyone decided to go to the restroom,” Winn said. When Verna didn’t come back, so he asked her cousin to check on her. Verna’s cousin found her unconscious in the bathroom stall, and rushed back to deliver the shocking news.

“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.

According to Winn, his wife got CPR until officers with the Prince George’s County Police Department and EMS came to the restaurant. She was later pronounced dead from a heart attack. They waited almost three hours for the coroner’s office to collect the body. However, during this time the restaurant continued to serve people.

A curtain barrier blocked the women’s restroom where the family gathered, andthe men’s restroom was offered for men and women. The restaurant stayed open until midnight, sparking a backlash on a social media.

“Hindsight is 20/20, we didn’t know it was going to take the coroner two hours to collect the body,” one of the owners, Fred Rosenthal, told NBC News. “If we did, we would’ve stopped seating people. We were trying to keep it as respectful as possible and not cause a scene.”

Rosenthal confirmed that the coroner’s office arrived at Jasper’s around 9 p.m. to retrieve the body, over two hours after police responded to the scene. The body was removed quietly through a side entrance so as not to not disturb customers.

“The only thing that would’ve made me feel better is if somebody, a management person who was working that night, would’ve come over and asked what they could do to make the situation better,” Winn told told Fox 5 DC.