- “An insult to the pain of the family.” The urn is opened in the middle of the burial and the Hispanic family sues the cemetery
- José Semidey and Awilda Rivera have decided to sue The Evergreens Cemetery, in Brooklyn (NYC), for negligence
- During the funeral of his mother, Claribel Oppenheimer, 79, the urn was opened right in front of the mourners
“An insult to the pain of the family.” The urn is opened in the middle of the burial and the Hispanic family demands the cemetery. The unfortunate incident occurred in New York City, where a painful moment turned into something truly painful for loved ones.
José Semidey and Awilda Rivera have decided to sue The Evergreens Cemetery, in Brooklyn (NYC), for negligence and it is that during the funeral of their mother, Claribel Oppenheimer, 79, the urn was opened right in front of the mourners.
Urn is opened in the middle of the funeral and the Hispanic family sues the cemetery
Not only was the urn opened before the astonished gaze of those present, but the cemetery workers desperately tried to force it into a hole that was actually smaller than necessary, indicates the lawsuit filed by the Hispanic family.
“A cemetery is in the business of burying people and I think the most basic thing they do every day is dig holes,” argued Eric Rothstein, attorney for Oppenheimer’s children in the lawsuit process. “I don’t understand how something like this happens,” he added.
Hispanic family mired in grief
The Hispanic family, already mired in grief, ended up outraged that Mrs. Claribel could not have an honorable burial. His children denounced that the space to deposit the coffin was not large enough and that is why it not only got stuck, but it was opened in front of everyone with the remains of Mrs. Oppenheimer inside, reported the NY Journal.
In fact, relatives and friends present on June 24 during the funeral said that they looked inside the already damaged urn and the woman’s body was no longer in the solemn position in which it had been placed in the funeral home. Due to the “rough handling” in the cemetery, the lady’s hands were no longer bent over her.
The demand to the cemetery
The family recently filed a lawsuit with the State Supreme Court in The Bronx. In the document they narrate what 35 mourners witnessed and that is that they had said their last words to the deceased and placed the roses on the urn, when the cemetery workers began to struggle with the coffin so that it would enter the designated space.
They say they heard the urn scrape against the narrow walls of the hole and that employees “pushed, raised and lowered the coffin over and over again to try to get it into the ground,” the lawsuit says.
Bury the deceased, how about a place?
In the document they added that after the coffin was attacked, the employees of the cemetery tried to pull it and that they even began to argue among themselves, so the situation became somewhat aggressive while they tried to solve the problem.
Even after the urn had been damaged and the lid had been opened, the men continued to “throw” it, to the point where they thought Claribel’s body would fall off. The family watched the scene in tears, the report says.
Get Claribel out of there
In the end, the workers decided to place the damaged coffin with the woman’s body moved on the lawn. There he remained for an hour, while the men used a backhoe to open up more space and “yelled for the family to get away”.
The family lawyer affirms that “it is just one more piece of a situation that is already horrible”, because the behavior of the employees and the situation in general was an insult to the pain of the family.
Has happened before
Apparently, a worker would have told the family that it was not the first time such a situation had occurred, since “this section of the cemetery has had this problem before with coffins that do not fit properly in the graves.”
The Evergreens Cemetery, in Brooklyn, New York, has not commented on the unpleasant timing, or the lawsuit. The urn is opened in the middle of the burial and the Hispanic family sues the cemetery.