Funeral home that stacked bodies in
U-Hauls faces lawsuit from victim’s family
BY TODD MAISEL &
JESSICA PARKS
The family of a COVID-19
victim whose body was placed
in an unrefrigerated U-Haul is
preparing to sue the two Brooklyn
funeral homes responsible
for allegedly mishandling the
corpse.
Attorneys representing the
family of Angela Rodriguez,
who died on March 24 at age 77,
say they plan to sue both Dekalb
Funeral Services in Clinton
Hill and Andrew T. Cleckley
Funeral Home in Flatlands for
improperly storing bodies that
were supposed to be cremated.
Attorneys from the law
fi rm Morgan & Morgan claim
that Rodriguez’s granddaughter
contracted with Dekalb Funeral
Services to care for Rodriguez’s
remains after her death.
The family continuously called
to check up on the status of the
body, but received no update
until the Medical Examiner’s
Offi ce notifi ed them more than
a month later that Rodriguez’s
body had been one of the many
discovered in an unrefrigerated
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U-Haul truck outside of
Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral
Home in Flatlands.
The lawsuit will hopefully
give the family answers about
how Rodriguez’s body ended up
in the Flatlands truck, the family’s
lawyer said.
“The best way to get answers
is to fi le a lawsuit, so we
will demand that records be
preserved and provided to us,”
said attorney Kathryn Barnett.
“What this family has been
through, no family should go
through and a jury will have to
decide what to do.”
The Dekalb Funeral Home
picked up Rodriguez’s remains
on April 4, and told the family
on April 6 that a crematory
was picking them up and they
“shouldn’t worry, the body
will be handled properly,” Barnett
said. But over a month and
countless calls later, the family
was informed on May 7 that
their loved one’s body was discovered
in the U-Haul truck.
The impending lawsuit
comes nearly two weeks after
police saw workers from the
Flatlands funeral home transferring
dozens of corpses from
two U-Haul trucks into a large
refrigerator truck on April 29.
The bodies had been stored in
the unrefrigerated trucks for
weeks, residents said, causing a
strong odor.
A police investigation later
found that the funeral home
had fi lled both U-Haul trucks,
as well as the its chapel, up to
the roofs with decomposing
bodies. The Rodriguez family’s
attorneys claimed that the
Cleckley funeral home had 60 to
65 bodies at one point destined
for crematories in New Jersey
and Pennsylvania.
Funeral home offi cials claim
that the bodies were supposed
to be accepted by crematories,
but those unnamed funeral
companies failed to pick up and
kept “canceling appointments
for pick-up,” causing Cleckley
to store the bodies any way they
could.
While no arrests were made,
the State Department of Health
suspended the Flatlands funeral
home’s license on May 1.
It remains unclear why
the bodies were being brought
from other funeral homes to
Cleckley in the fi rst place, but
Barnett alleged that the homes
were holding onto the bodies
for fi scal reasons and that their
handling methods “violated
families’ trust.”
The brother of the Cleckley’s
owner has since said the home
reached out to the city for help,
but “nobody did anything until
the police came here.”
Either way, Morgan said, his
fi rm does not believe Dekalb
and Cleckley are alone in their
mishandling.
“We believe there are multiple
funeral homes in this scam,”
he said. “They didn’t have to
take these remains, nobody
forced them – so the claims are
professional negligence, deceptive
trade practices and we will
seek punitive damages, and
deter any funeral home from
ever taking advantage of families
again.”
The Flatlands funeral home
could not be reached for further
comment.
A Flatlands funeral home came under fi re for its storage methods after
an April 29 police investigation. Photo by Todd Maisel
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