SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) -- A San Jose funeral home is accused of making a terrible mistake, of mishandling human remains. A father has filed a lawsuit that says the funeral director gave him a bag with what was supposed to be his son's clothing. Once he got home, he realized the bag contained his son's brain.
It's widely said that no father should have to bury his son. But the pain for this San Jose family is even worse because of what appears to be a funeral director's ghastly mistake.
Alexander Pinon, 27, passed away on May 19 of this year; his family asked the I-Team not to report the cause or manner of death. They are struggling with their loss and with their experience at the Lima Family Erickson Memorial Chapel on Willow Street in San Jose.
The family's attorney, Samer Habbas, told the I-Team, "They wanted to do what's right for their son, and they wanted to have a dignified farewell for him."
Habbas filed a lawsuit for the family that says they agreed to pay Lima more than $10,000 for a "full-service memorial tribute package." They also wanted to give nicer clothes for Alex to wear during the burial service and asked the funeral director to return what he was wearing at the time of death. The lawsuit says Anita Singh handed Alex's father a bag; he went home to put it straight into the laundry, and out tumbled brain material into the washing machine.
"At that point, they had no idea that it was their son's brain that was in the washing machine," Habbas said. "They didn't know if it was mixed up with somebody else's brain, whether it was their son's, they had not a single idea."
Alex's father scooped out the brain from the washing machine, put it back in the bag, and returned it to Anita Singh at the funeral home.
Habbas said, "Ms. Singh took the bag back from him. Never disclosed whose brain it was, never gave information, no apologies, and said, 'I'll take that from here.'"
The next day, Alex was buried at Oak Hill Memorial Cemetery. Weeks later, the lawsuit says a whistleblower who works at the funeral home came forward to confirm it was Alex's brain in that bag, and that after the mix-up, funeral director Anita Singh placed it in a box and left it outside in the funeral home's courtyard for two-and-a-half months. Finally, an employee spotted the box with the bag inside and became "overwhelmed with the smell" of "a rotting human brain."
"Don't get me wrong, errors can happen," Habbas told the I-Team. "But what cannot happen, and what should not happen, is that you cover up your errors, and that's what the funeral home has done here."
The Lima Family funeral home referred us to its owner, Service Corporation International or SCI, the largest funeral service company in North America. They operate under the Dignity Memorial brand, pledging reliable service.
Dignity's promotional video says, "We need to get every detail right the first time. Every time."
SCI spokesperson Christopher James sent the I-Team's Dan Noyes an email, "Due to active litigation, we won't be commenting on this matter." Our next stop was the Lima Family Chapel, looking for the funeral director. An office manager told me Anita Singh did work here, but she left for good two weeks.
Noyes was able to catch up with the funeral director as she arrived home, and asked, "How do you give a father his son's brains and not a bag of clothing? Anita."
Singh just backed away.
"Anything to say to the family?" Noyes asked.
The I-Team also scheduled an interview with Alex Pinon's parents, but they were too emotional and decided they couldn't talk about their ordeal just yet. In the meantime, their lawsuit moves forward, and their lawyers are negotiating a plan to reunite Alex's brain with the rest of him, already buried at Oak Hill.
"We don't know the extent of how much suffering they're gonna go through for the remainder of their life," Habbas said. "But I can tell you, it's something that they're never gonna forget, it's something they're gonna have to live with forever."
The I-Team also reached out to the company's attorney on the case; he did not answer. He also has not filed a response to the lawsuit yet, and it's been more than two months.
