By Jesse Bedayn, The Related Press/Report for America
A household filed a lawsuit Monday towards a Colorado funeral house the place 189 decaying our bodies had been discovered, alleging the house owners allowed the stays of their family members to “rot” away whereas they despatched households pretend ashes.
The ugly discovery at Return to Nature Funeral Dwelling occurred earlier in October after stories of an “abhorrent odor” coming from a constructing about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Denver.
Regulation enforcement officers have began figuring out the stays and begun notifying households that their family members had been among the many our bodies — generally years after they had been allegedly cremated and given as ashes to grieving kin.
The lawsuit accuses Return to Nature and its house owners Jon and Carie Hallford of deliberately inflicting emotional misery, negligence, fraud and violating quite a lot of Colorado legal guidelines amongst different claims.
Calls and texts despatched to numbers listed for Return to Nature and house owners have gone unanswered for the reason that discovery of the decaying our bodies. No arrests have been made.
“In dying, these women and men deserved to be handled with respect and dignity. As an alternative, they had been defiled,” Andrew Swan, an lawyer who shall be representing households, mentioned in an announcement.
The Related Press reported earlier this month that the funeral house appeared to have fabricated cremation information and should have given households pretend ashes.
The person who filed the lawsuit on behalf of different households, Richard Regulation, despatched his father’s stays to Return to Nature in 2020 after Roger Regulation — who owned a shoe enterprise and had an irreverent humor and quiet religion — died of COVID-19.
The funeral house claimed to cremate his father, and despatched the youthful Regulation what gave the impression to be ashes. Three years later, his father’s physique was recognized within the constructing.
“For almost three years, Return to Nature Funeral Dwelling and the Hallfords allowed my father to rot together with almost 200 others,” he mentioned.
