Wow! I'm so sorry to hear about what your family had to go through and all of the other events that resulted! It was very good of you to help out like you did. I think you answered your own question though... if it was your mother, you'd like to know. I think that makes you morally obligated to contact the family. The police probably considered the hospitol's opinion to be "expert" opinion and think you were just confused (based on the chaos).

I'm shocked to hear that hospitols can be grandfathered into safety laws... wow.