A homeless San Diego woman was left to die in the back of her wrecked van that was towed — because no one checked inside first before the vehicle was shipped off to an impound lot, according to her family’s $50 million lawsuit.
Monica Cameroni de Adams suffered “severe, but survivable, blunt force injuries” when a drunk driver slammed into her Honda Odyssey that was parked on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard on Nov. 5, 2023, according to the lawsuit obtained by The Post Friday.
The van, which Cameroni de Adams called home, was immediately towed to an impound lot — with no one spotting the injured 65-year-old, who was readily visible in the middle row seats, the complaint alleged.
“The death was proximately caused by leaving her alone, struggling with her injuries inside of her car, entombing her in her car, taking her car to the tow yard and leaving her there to die,” the family’s lawyer John Carpenter told CBS 8.
Cameroni de Adams’ badly decomposed remains were only discovered a month later, on Dec. 6, 2023, when a yard worker reported to cops a “pungent smell” coming from the van, the suit said.
Now, the woman’s two adult children, who initially filed a missing persons report, are suing San Diego for wrongful death, accusing authorities of negligence and “tortious interference with human remains,” among other complaints.
The suit lists the city of San Diego, San Diego Police Department, Roadway Towing & Recovery and others as defendants. They didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Their lawsuit doesn’t delve into the kids’ relationship with their mother or explain why she was living in a van, but it claims they “continuously attempted” to find her.
They filed a missing persons report on Nov. 14, 2023 when their mother failed to respond to messages wishing her a happy birthday.
“The last place you would think to look for a missing person was inside of a car,” Carpenter told CBS.
Cameroni de Adams’ official cause of death was deemed to be blunt force trauma injuries, but the drunk driver, Jordan Lopez, later pleaded a vehicular manslaughter charge down to DUI causing injury.
Lopez is scheduled to be sentenced next week and faces up to six years in prison, according to CBS.
“Just because someone is homeless doesn’t mean that they don’t have a family that loves them. Things are difficult. It’s easy to overlook people that are homeless, but they do have loving families, and they do matter, and this story exemplifies that,” he added.
