Several daughters of 93-year-old Euvy Rodney expressed outrage and are demanding justice after they say a family-owned funeral home in Queens mistakenly cremated their beloved mother.
“We have lost our mom twice,” Christine Weaver said, speaking outside J. Foster Phillips Funeral Home in St. Albans. “We have lost her in death. We have lost her body. We have no closure for our mother.”
“I spoke with the funeral director [who] was dealing with me,” Ramona Rodney Park, the youngest daughter of Euvy Rodney, said. “And he further agreed, further told me that I wasn’t allowed to see her.”
Rodney Park was living with her mother in Lynbrook, Long Island, when their family’s matriarch died July 8.
She says her family had informed the staff at J. Foster Phillips Funeral Home that it was mother’s intention to be buried in her home country of Guyana.
Rodney Park became so overcome with emotion that she fainted while discussing the heartbreak and devastation she is now feeling.
NY1 has reached out several times by phone, by email, even in person, to seek comment from the funeral home.
One of the family’s attorneys says there was no excuse for the cremation to have taken place.
“This funeral home knew that Uvey Agnes Rodney was supposed to go home to Guyana to be buried with her family,” attorney Wayne Wattley of EEP Law Firm said. “We know they knew that is because it’s on the death certificate.”
A spokesperson for the National Funeral Directors Association says that as part of standard protocols involving “chain of custody,” a wristband or ankle bracelet with a decedent’s name is placed on their body as soon as possible to help identify them.
He says that process nearly never goes wrong.
“It would sound like it would almost have to be human error,” NFDA spokesperson Jack Mitchell said. “These kind of things almost never happen. If I say one in more than a million. I’m not saying that figuratively.”
Attorneys for the family say a lawsuit has not yet been filed, but say they will likely seek compensation for emotional distress.
Meantime, a celebration of life for Euvy Rodney is expected to take place Friday at the Episcopal Church of St. Alban the Martyr.