A family in Long Island is suing a local funeral home for allegedly putting the wrong person in their mother’s plot.
The 11 children of the late Sadie Williams are seeking $88 million, claiming gross negligence.
Family members say they told the funeral director at Amityville’s Joseph A. Slinger-Hasgill Funeral Home that it wasn’t their loved one, but he insisted it was.
“I said, ‘Mom has a mole.’ I just kept picking out different things,” Salimah Lee explained, “And he stood at the top of the steps of the funeral home, laughing, going, ‘Oh, I hear that all the time. They tell me. People say that all the time. The embalming fluid smooths them out.'”
Three days after the service, the director called and told the family they were right.
“He said, ‘I just want you to know that that wasn’t your mom,'” Lee said.
Lee said she raced to the funeral home and recorded a video capturing the moment she finally got to see her mother for the last time.
“That’s my mother. … I just knew it. I said her mole was missing and everything,” Lee can be heard saying in the video, while the funeral director can be heard saying, “I’m just sick. I’m sick. … So now I have to let the other family know.”
Williams’ burial was supposed to take place no more than 72-hours after her passing because of Muslim tradition but it turned into 22 days.
