An East London family was horrified to find the wrong body when they went to view their loved one at the mortuary.
Their relative, they later discovered, had already been buried by another family.
The bodies were both taken to the mortuary on April 11.
Denzel Fuller, owner of Integrity Funeral Homes, said the error happened because of the accidental switching of the name tags by a staff member who had mistakenly taken off the tag while they were washing the body — and replaced it on the wrong body.
The second family involved in the switch had already unknowingly buried the body, as they did not view the deceased before the burial.
Fuller said: “What helped with the identification of the switched bodies was the fact that of the bodies that arrived that day, there were only two females.
“On the day of the incident we were a lot busier than usual because we were short-staffed.
“So we asked one of our helpers, who has no experience in washing bodies, to assist, and I believe that is when the error occurred.
“The assistant has only been working for over a year, so I think it was just a matter of protecting the tag from getting wet.
“She had little understanding of the consequences of removing the labels.”
The duties of the helper include loading bodies into coffins, closing them and pushing them into the morgue.
Fuller said in their 20 years of business, this was the first time they had dealt with an incident of this kind.
“We were beating ourselves up on that day, trying to figure out how it might have happened.
“We have policies and principles as to how we run and manage the place.
“Our policy is never to take off the tag, even when washing the bodies.”
Fuller said though the first body had already been buried, the company performed a legal exhumation, following all due processes.
“We offered both families professional counselling at our cost and the first session is taking place tomorrow. We also refunded them all the funeral costs.”
Fuller said after this incident, the company would be stricter about the procedures.
“From now on, no helpers will work in the cold room ever again.
“In fact it [almost] never happens; we always have our permanent staff who are qualified and have experience in that operations area.”
Fuller also said they had changed the way they did their tagging so the tags could not be removed under any circumstances.
Daily Dispatch
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