A New York
family is stunned and outraged after the city medical examiner sent the body
and organs of their 82-year-old relative to the funeral home in separate
shipments according to Fox News.com.
Because of the mix-up, the body of Rhoda Callwood was buried last week in Westchester County
with her body lying in the casket and her organs next to her in plastic
buckets, according to Funeral director William Curran, of John F.X. McKeon
Funeral Home in the Bronx.
"It's bizarre," Curran, who has been in the funeral home business for
20 years, fold FoxNews.com. "I've never seen anything like it."
According to Curran, Callwood's family requested two autopsies after her
death, at New York
Presbyterian Hospital
– one by the hospital and one by the city medical examiner. But when the
hospital forwarded the body to the city coroner, it was missing the organs,
Curran said. The M.E.'s investigators went to the hospital to get them the next
day, according to Curran.
After performing its own autopsy, the Medical Examiner's office sent the
remains to the funeral home in separate shipments. Officials from the Medical
Examiner's office didn't want to open up Callwood's body again given that
Curran would soon be preparing the body for burial, according to WABC-TV,
which first reported the story.
"I am so confused with everything going on, I don't have time to mourn,
really," Glenda Callwood, Rhoda Callwood's daughter, told the station.
The family has sought to have the organs tested to ensure they are
Callwood's, and has also hired an attorney.
"We sympathize with the family in the loss of their loved one," the
hospital told the station. "The Medical Examiner's office says it didn't intend
to add to the family's grief, but that their normal protocol is to put organs
back in bodies."
Curran, who said he did his best to comfort family members when their grief
was compounded by the strange sequence of events, was still at a loss for
answers.
"If that is the Medical Examiner's protocol, then why didn't they follow
it?" he asked.
