ATLANTA — A grieving Georgia family is suing a metro Atlanta funeral home and accusing the business of sending them an urn full of dirt instead of baby’s ashes.
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Channel 2′s Michael Seiden was outside Emory University Hospital in Midtown Tuesday, where Alexus Taylor and Jalen Matthews, of Valdosta, said they spent a month with baby Josiah last October before he died. Josiah was born with Trisomy 18, a rare but fatal genetic disorder that causes a wide range of severe medical problems. He died Nov. 14, 2023.
“We didn’t know how much time we had with him,” Matthew said.
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The couple said a family member recommended Stan Henderson & Son Funeral Home in Henry County to handle the baby’s remains.
“It was very important that I had him cremated. I wanted to be able to bring him home because I always knew that, you know, most likely we (would) never get to bring him there,” Taylor said.
They held a memorial service at the funeral home, they said it took nearly four months to get Josiah’s ashes. But then two weeks later, they were told the baby’s remains were still at the funeral home.
“Like two weeks later, that’s when we got the call and, you know, that Josiah was still at the crematory,” Taylor said.
A third party that handles cremation made the call. Attorneys for the couple said that instead of giving them their child’s ashes, the funeral home filled the urn with dirt.
“It does look like some soil that’s in there mixed with some other things,” Taylor said.
The family’s lawyer said the funeral home intentionally misled the couple.
“This was deliberate fraud, deliberate mishandling and abandonment of human remains, disrespect to the body of a child,” Attorney Issac Lezcano said. “And we believe that it was motivated by financial gain.
Seiden spoke to the funeral home’s owner, Stan Henderson, who said repeatedly that the allegations are a lie. He wouldn’t let Seiden record the conversation.
“Like I said, I did my due diligence, reached out, so if you want to call me back once you get an attorney, then we can sit down and talk,” Seiden told him.
The couple said Josian’s ashes are now with his grandmother.
The couple’s attorneys said that they have now heard from several other alleged victims.
They plan to file a lawsuit against the funeral home later this week.
According to the Georgia State Funeral Service Records, the state placed the funeral home on probation in 2022, which ended in January. The business had several positive reviews, but also several complaints.
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