A South Side woman has sued the struggling funeral home that was supposed to handle her mother’s funeral, claiming the business kept her mother’s body for more than 40 days after the funeral until the funeral home was shut down last week by police because it had no heat or power.
Tamika Richardson claims she hired Carter Funeral Chapels, 2100 E. 75th St., to stage a funeral for her mother, Constance Smith, and cremate her remains. Smith’s body arrived Jan. 7, and the funeral was held the next day at their church.
But in the weeks that followed, Richardson repeatedly asked Carter Chapels for her mother’s ashes and was put off by the funeral home’s staff, said Michael LaMonica, Richardson’s lawyer.
“This was the first funeral she’d ever arranged. She was told there would be a little delay with the death certificate,” LaMonica said.
Last week, Richardson saw Carter Funeral Chapels on the news, as police investigated conditions inside the building after a neighbor reported that an outside door was ajar early Feb. 20.
“Then she’s watching the news one night and she sees all of a sudden it’s the funeral home that has her mother,” LaMonica said. “To her horror, here it is, 45 days after they brought her body … (and) they tell her she’s still there.”
Police issued funeral home owner Harry Carter III citations for operating the business without electricity or heat. State regulators would not comment on whether an investigation is ongoing.
Court records indicate that Carter and his business have been struggling for years. Carter’s license to act as a funeral director and embalmer has been suspended since 2008, and he has been cited by federal authorities and sued by creditors, including ComEd, to which he owed $25,000 in 2010.
Nine bodies were in various states of preparation for cremation or burial when police arrived. Carter said his power was shut off in October, but he has made do with gasoline generators.
Carter said six of the bodies, including Richardson’s mother’s, had been there for long periods because physicians had not signed death certificates for them, which is required before he can cremate them.
“If they’re looking for a causative factor, they need to look to the physician who made it impossible to do anything to take care of her mother,” Carter said, claiming it is “routine” for doctors to delay signing a death certificate for weeks.
LaMonica said Constance Smith’s death certificate was signed Jan. 21. Smith’s ashes arrived in a box the day after her body was removed from Carter Chapels.
Carter said Monday that the bodies all were in “excellent” condition. He since has had them taken to other funeral homes. The longtime business owner said he has been subjected to scrutiny because the bodies were in disarray when police arrived.
Carter said a disgruntled former employee had broken in and attempted to stage a gruesome scene to draw negative attention to the business. He added that he had asked to have the former employee arrested, but police released him after a cursory interview.
Chicago Police News Affairs said the report did not discuss the location of the bodies when officers arrived.
Carter said he had space to properly store as many as 17 bodies at the funeral home, and there was no need for him to stack corpses in the garage or atop one another.
Carter said that other than the citations for not having heat or electricity, neither he nor the business has faced any more serious charges.
“I’m not asking people to believe me, I’m asking them to think,” he said. “Why keep bodies in pristine condition and then stack them on top of each other?”
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