A Texas funeral home is under investigation after a stabbing at the facility led police to discover ten improperly kept bodies.
The discovery was made after police were called to Houston’s Richardson Mortuary Friday morning with reports that an employee had begun stabbing a customer who was filming bodies, local outlet ABC13 reports.
A group of siblings went to the funeral home because they were worried about their mother and uncles’ bodies — and what they discovered confirmed their worst fears.
“I opened up the casket, and she had gnats in her face,” Tamara McGruder, one of the siblings present who filmed videos of the bodies, told ABC13.
McGruder and her siblings discovered ten bodies laying out exposed without air conditioning in the building.
“It’s bodies in caskets, boxes, plastic bags. Its no A/C, its gnats. It smells like rotten blood,” she added.
As McGruder was filming, an employee confronted them and asked them to leave. When they refused, the employee allegedly stabbed her brother in the stomach, ABC13 reports. McGruder’s brother had only minor injuries, and drove himself to the hospital.
Once McGruder shared her video online, other people whose loved ones were at the funeral home rushed over.
Murita Brown told local outlet KPRC2 her grandmother’s body was one of those shown in the video.
“She was a loving person. She fed everybody. She’ll give you the clothes off her back. And she was a fighter. She was in a wheelchair. She was paralyzed,” Brown said. “To see her arm kind of like draped off that stretcher, it’s just, it’s heartbreaking.”
Brown told ABC13 her grandmother should’ve already been cremated at that point.
“She was supposed to be cremated already and we been waiting on her ashes and nothing having been happening,” she said.
Demtrious Riley-Sylvester told Fox 26 she similarly believed her brother’s body had been cremated by the funeral home, but that wasn’t true.
“It’s like some trash or a dog. Just throw him away like he’s trash and she had me believing. We were just waiting on them to bring the ashes,” she said.
A Harris County law enforcement official spoke with the funeral home owner, who said he had called vans to bring the bodies to an air-conditioned facility, KPRC 2 reports. The owner added he was in the hospital after suffering a heart attack.
Police say the owner could face criminal charges.
“You could look at abuse of corpse, things of that nature, but we’ll know more as we go through it,” Houston Police Department Captain Jim Dale said.
The Independent has contacted the funeral home for comment.
