A family was left devastated and traumatized after discovering a stranger’s body in their loved one’s casket, leading to one relative suffering a heart attack from the shock.
During Joey Espinosa’s funeral service at a funeral home, his aunt, Laura Levario, noticed a different casket than the one they had chosen, prompting her to realize that the person inside was not her nephew. The distressing revelation caused Laura’s husband to have a heart attack due to the extreme stress, ultimately waking up three days later while on life support.
Following the unsettling incident, the family was relocated to another room at the Forest Lawn Covina Hills funeral home in California, where yet another incorrect casket was placed. It took staff over an hour to guide them to the correct room, allowing them to commence the mourning process. Laura described the experience as the most traumatic they had ever encountered.
Forest Lawn attributed the mix-up to a “scheduling error” and offered the family $200 as an apology, which was insufficient to cover the nearly $20,000 funeral expenses. Subsequently, the Espinosa family is pursuing legal action against the California mortuary for emotional distress and negligence, as stated by their attorney in an interview with CBS News.
In a similar incident, two sisters were shocked to find a stranger dressed in their mother’s clothes in a coffin at a different funeral home. Initially denied by the staff, the daughters later discovered their mother’s body in the embalming room, highlighting a significant mismatch in appearance between their mother and the unidentified woman in the casket. After the mix-up was acknowledged, the bodies were correctly identified, and the funeral proceeded as planned.
The families involved in these distressing incidents seek justice and accountability for the grave errors that occurred during their loved ones’ final farewells.