Leiva Funeral Home Says Miscommunication Led to Cremation

On Wednesday night, we brought you the horrific story of twenty-six-year-old Dornell Talbert. He is the resident of Double Head Cabbage who was murdered over the weekend and his body was mistakenly cremated only a couple days later. Munnings Funeral Home broke the unfortunate news to the family on Wednesday afternoon. The owner, Andrew Munnings, is taking full responsibility for the error. He contends, however, that the third-party funeral home he contracted to transport Talbert’s body from Burrell Boom to the K.H.M.H. morgue got the instructions all wrong and proceeded to cremate the body instead. Well, today, we spoke with the director of the funeral home that was contracted as a third party, Leiva Funeral Home. News Five’s Paul Lopez reports.

 

“Chico”, Director, Leiva’s Funeral Home

“First of all, I got a call from Mister Munnings, so I asked him are you ready for the cremation? He said, no, finance is not available as yet, but I have a body for you to pick up a body and deal with. When I get that statement to deal with a body it is direct cremation. If you say transport, from point A to point B, that is different.”

 

Paul Lopez, Reporting

That’s the voice of Chico. He is using a childhood alias and is speaking off camera for fear of his safety. Chico runs a funeral home that mistakenly cremated the body of twenty-six-year-old Dornell Talbert earlier this week. Talbert was shot and killed in Scotland Halfmoon on Saturday. As the undertaker explains, a cremation that was scheduled for Monday was eventually postponed.

 

“Chico”, Director, Leiva’s Funeral Home

“And first of all, this mix up with a man and woman, can’t be possible. One body is at Karl Heusner from August the thirty-first and one body is at Burrell Boom. So, there is no mix up in a male and a female. The mix-up is cremation and transport from Burrell Boom to Karl Heusner.”

 

Paul Lopez

“How do you interpret a body “to deal with” as cremation?

 

“Chico”, Levia Funeral Home

“Usually, if you say transport a body from point A, to point B, I know that is clear, transport a body from point A to point B. But, when you say I have a body to deal with, automatically I say, in my head, that is cremation, because that is the term we are already use to.”

A tomb for what should have been Talbert’s casket has already been constructed at the Double Head Cabbage Cemetery. The grave error, however, now means that a metal urn will be placed inside the concrete tomb and not a wooden casket. Stephanie Talbert spoke with us today while standing next to her son’s tomb.

 

Stephanie Talbert, Mother of Deceased

“Well we can’t make no arrangements. It is already done. We just have to finish it and we wah put this person that is supposed to be my son in there. I don’t know if this dah my son, in loving memory of who. Mister Munnings did everything he could do for us and now I have to deal with this. And so we just wah do with this and do it on our own. We have our pastor that we are going to do the service with, because now it is not a funeral service. It is like a celebration to remember life. Everything stays the same, it’s just that now it is without a body.”

 

According to Andrew Munnings, before any cremation, the funeral home must be in possession of a death certificate and full authorization must be given by the family. In this case, while Munnings Funeral Home had the death certificate, none of the funeral homes were in possession of a consent form from Dornell Talbert’s family.

 

Andrew Munnings, Owner, Munnings Funeral Home

“The body should have been in the morgue from Monday evening. Keep in mind the morgue was waiting for this body to come back from Monday evening. If it was that I had scheduled a cremation the morgue would have locked up from five, the morgue would not have waited for anybody. There was no consent for any cremation, anything. When I got the death certificate it was from an employee at the medical college because the family member that witnessed the autopsy did not have any net. You have to send me that for me to say, I declare I am the person in charge of this body. That is the reason why I called the other funeral home, please go ahead, I am dealing with my daughter, move the body from Boom and bring it back to KHMH.”

Leiva’s Funeral Home trusted that its counterpart had all the paperwork dealt with and would make the proper submissions after the September Tenth holiday. Chico says, all he needed to move the body from Burrell Boom was the death certificate which was left at the facility’s security booth.

 

“Chico”, Director, Leiva Funeral Home

“Listen to me, these guys contract me to cremate. They deal with the paperwork. I go and deal with the physical part, because it is not my personal job. If it was my personal job, I would have known it was no cremation, because I would have been up there with that form. I don’t use any other agent or any other people. I try to be there to the best of my ability, so these things don’t happen. This is nothing strange to me. Sometimes the body is decomposed, sometimes the autopsy finishes when the autopsy is already finished. So, this is nothing strange to me, like this is the first time I went to do a cremation without certain documents. I just got to clear my name, because I am a well-known guy and anywhere I go, they say “bway, bway, you burn the wrong body”. I can’t go on living like this.”

 

Chico insists that the blunder was the result of miscommunication and nothing more. The situation has left his entire staff distressed and sends his condolences to the family. News Five understands that the family of Dornell Talbert is weighing its options, including the possibility of legal recourse.

 

Stephanie Talbert

“They need at least a family member, the paper from the postmortem, the death certificate and none of that was not given. I still, we need more answers. There are more questions than answers. There is still so much things that should have been done instead of going through with a, whatever it is called, cremation. I get it correct, cremation.”

 

Reporting for News Five, I am Paul Lopez.