LA Funeral Home Owner Accused Of Letting Bodies Rot In ‘Shocking’ Case

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Los Angeles funeral dwelling proprietor illegally left the stays of 11 folks, together with infants, in levels of decay and mummification and faces greater than a decade in jail, prosecutors stated Friday.

Metropolis Legal professional Mike Feuer, whose workplace can solely file misdemeanor offenses, introduced the fees Friday, calling it an “extremely unhappy and surprising scenario” and stated that officers might scent the odor from outdoors the San Fernando Valley facility.

“Eleven folks died, together with very younger youngsters, and the funeral director employed to compassionately put together the our bodies for burial allegedly simply allow them to rot, with neither the decency nor the dignity that each one our family members deserve,” Feuer stated in a press release. “Their deaths are one tragedy, and this alleged monstrous mistreatment is a second tragedy.”

Funeral properties that mistreat human stays have made headlines for years. Funeral dwelling laws differ throughout the U.S., with some states requiring annual inspections and several other requiring no inspections in any respect.

In probably the most excessive circumstances, greater than 330 decaying corpses had been present in 2002 within the Tri-State Crematory close to the tiny group of Noble, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) northwest of Atlanta. The previous operator pleaded responsible to just about 800 felony expenses associated to fraud and corpse abuse after the our bodies had been discovered.

In Los Angeles, authorities opened an investigation into the Mark B. Allen Mortuary and Cremations Companies Inc., after receiving complaints from households. The mortuary, owned by Mark B. Allen, is now closed and cellphone numbers listed for the enterprise had been disconnected.

It was not instantly clear whether or not Allen has an lawyer who can communicate on his behalf. He faces 22 misdemeanor expenses — two for every particular person — from the state’s Well being and Security Code, the place one statute makes it unlawful for anybody to eliminate human stays wherever that isn’t a cemetery. The second statute that Allen faces is disposing of stays illegally by way of his function as a funeral director. The utmost penalty is $110,000 and 11 years in jail.