Funeral home displays wrong body at memorial service, leading relative to suffer heart attack
The body of Joey Espinosa, 44, was allegedly misplaced by a California funeral home ahead of his memorial service. Laura Levario
A California family’s grief turned into a nightmare when they discovered a stranger’s body lying in their loved one’s casket during a memorial service — an ordeal so shocking it caused one family member to suffer a heart attack in the chapel.
The family of 44-year-old Joey Espinosa, who had recently passed away from heart failure, gathered at Forest Lawn Covina Hills Funeral Home to say their final goodbyes. But when the casket was opened, they were stunned to find someone else’s remains inside.
“They didn’t know where my nephew’s body was,” said Laura Levario, Espinosa’s aunt, in an interview with CBS Los Angeles.
Funeral home staff quickly ushered the family into another room, hoping to correct the mistake — but to their horror, the second body wasn’t Espinosa’s either. The devastating confusion caused Levario’s husband to collapse from a heart attack right there in the chapel, later awakening in the hospital three days later on life support.
“It’s the worst experience we’ve ever had,” Levario said.
Forest Lawn attributed the disturbing mix-up to a “scheduling error,” and reportedly offered the grieving family just $200 in compensation — a mere fraction of the nearly $20,000 they had paid for the funeral.
The Espinosa family has since filed a lawsuit against the funeral home, accusing it of emotional distress and negligence. Their attorney, Elvis Tran, said the family’s mourning was replaced by confusion and horror.
“Instead of being able to remember their loved one, they were forced to search for his body,” Tran said. “When you’re spending that much money on a place like Forest Lawn, you expect professionalism — not chaos.”
After more than an hour of confusion, the funeral home finally located Espinosa’s body and the service was able to proceed.
While rare, these kinds of distressing mix-ups are not unheard of. Earlier this month, a New Jersey family sued a Camden funeral home after discovering the wrong body dressed in their loved one’s clothing. In another case, a New York City funeral home mistakenly shipped the remains of a 96-year-old Queens grandmother to Guatemala instead of her native Ecuador — prompting yet another lawsuit over the mishandling of human remains.
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