The two funeral houses allegedly mourned the parents of their deceased son in a box, which started sniffing, leaked in his car and when he moved it, he came into the father’s hands, according to an updated trial this week.
Father, Lawrence Butler said the discovery was heavy at a news conference on Thursday, except for a terrible memory, which kills other memories of a “good youth”, his son, Timothy Garlington.
“It was, and it’s still, in my heart that I found in my car and smelled me of death,” he said, Bhavna broke her voice. Garlington’s mother, Abe Butler, stood nearby, wiping tears.
After Garlington’s death in 2023, Butlers sent his remains from a funeral home in Georgia to another in Pennsylvania, where he picked up his belongings, including a white cardboard box that had an unbelled red box.
In Nix & Nix Funral Homes, Abe Butler could not open the red box, butlers’ lawyer, L. Chris Stewart said at the news conference.
Several days later, the red box, which was in the butlers’ car, began to sniff and started leaking the fluid, Stewart said. When Lawrence Butler raised it, the fluid covered his hands, “which was a brain. It’s crazy,” Stewart said.
When they were called to the funeral home in Georgia, the southern cremation and funerals in Chautham Hill, they were told that it was Garlington’s brain and had made some mistake, Stewart said. Butlers returned the box to Nix and Nix, he said.
The company, who owns the Southern cremation, ASV partners, refused to comment on contact by AP.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Stewart said, “Parents are holding their son’s brain.”
“I had to get rid of that car,” Lawrence Butler said, “I can’t just consider that the remains were in that car.”
The trial states that the two funeral houses negligent human remains and deliberately, or negligent, provoked the emotional crisis.
Stewart said that he had consulted other funeral houses, and in this process the brain at any point has been “separated from the body in that fashion and sent to that fashion.” If this ever happens, they said, then it is in a seal bag and a biohazards label.
Nix and Nix knew that a brain was inside the box, alleging that Stewart accused the box to butlers as it was not in the list of goods sent from the southern cremation.
Julian Nix, manager of Titular Funeral Home, told AP that “this was definitely not our fault” because the southern cremation sent him an unleashed box.
Nix said that he informed the authorities when he learned what was inside. He said that the funeral houses were overseen by the State Board, which found that they were not responsible, but said that the documents prove that they were not yet available.
Butler is demanding compensation and answers to what went wrong. He also hopes that the lawsuit acts as a warning, so that similar incidents do not happen again.
Washington has been buried in crossing the national cemetery since Garlington, an experienced Garlington of American Marines, who was working in financial assistance for schools. Stewart, who refused to say how Garlington died at the age of 56, said that butlers still did not know if Garlington’s brain was buried with the rest of his people.
“They are afraid, which is fully understood: is he resting peacefully?” He said.
Jesse Bedain, Associated Press