Story thread · 2 reports / 2 sources

Family sues NYC funeral home that mistakenly cremated their father, put wrong body in coffin

nbcnewyork.com · 5h · first reportShare

A family is suing a Manhattan funeral home after a shocking mix-up involving their deceased father — and it’s far from the first complaint to be lodged against the business. The family and friends of Jose Daniel Diaz Felipe was prepared to say goodbye to the man they knew as Danielito at his wake in late May after his death at the age of 84. But when they showed up at the R.G. Ortiz Funeral Home in Washington Heights, they were stunned by who they found lying in his casket. “We open the coffin and find another man. And they were trying for hours to convince us he was our father,” Jose Luis Diaz, the man’s son, previously told NBC New York. Diaz said his father was bald, but the corpse lying in the coffin — which was dressed in his father’s clothes — had hair and was much taller his dad, who was 5’3. The family immediately tried to get answers from the funeral home about the whereabouts of their dad. At first, the funeral home insisted the body inside the casket for the wake was that of