Relatives of Raphael Garcia are considering their legal options, after they realised that at the end of his funeral service yesterday, it was not his body in the casket but another deceased.
Speaking with Guardian Media yesterday, Keon Cunningham said the family only found out the wrong body was at the service in Curepe when the final viewing was being done.
“When we opened the casket to do the official viewing, it was not my grandfather. When we did our research, we saw that the person who was in the casket was a man who died on December 20th. It seems as though nobody ever claimed the body.”
He added: “So we are asking ourselves if they tried to give us a six for a nine. The type of emotional trauma my mom, my aunts went through today (Friday) was horrific. Because we all were expecting something, someone that did not come. And I’m just trying to find out how another family would have felt knowing that another body went down in a hole that they too didn’t see, a relative that they too didn’t see.”
Cunningham added that when the body was returned to the Curepe-based funeral home, his grandfather’s body was there still with the clothes he died in at his Curepe home on February 24. The funeral home then switched clothes and took his grandfather’s body to be buried. However, Cunningham said the other deceased man had already been blessed, as last rites were performed during the funeral service.
“Knowing that the type of life he lived, and he doesn’t get to meet his maker with an earthly blessing as such, is very unfair,” the grandson said.
Cunningham said his grandfather was a great man who fathered nine children and had 16 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Guardian Media contacted the funeral home twice and was told managers were in meetings both times. An official promised that after the meeting a manager would return the call, but that did not happen up to press time.
Contacted yesterday, Association of Funeral Professionals of Trinidad and Tobago president Keith Belgrove said he was unaware of the incident.
In 2019 a similar incident occurred when Eaulin Blondel was cremated before her family had final rites for her, leaving her grieving relatives asking for her ashes.
Blondel’s family found out about the incident when her children went to view her body inside the chapel – and realised the body in the coffin was not that of their mother.
They told mourners already gathered that the funeral would be a bit later than expected, as there was a “mix-up” that needed to be addressed. After a frantic search, the funeral home said Blondel was cremated a week earlier.
