La policía encontró docenas de cuerpos almacenados en camiones sin refrigerar afuera de una funeraria de Brooklyn y acostados en el piso de las instalaciones el miércoles, según informaron fuentes policiales al Post.
Se descubrieron entre 40 y 60 cuerpos apilados en camiones con caja de U-Haul afuera de los Servicios Funerarios Andrew Cleckley en Flatlands o en el piso del edificio, luego de que los vecinos informaron un mal olor alrededor de la propiedad, dijeron las fuentes.
Los cadáveres estaban apilados uno encima del otro en los camiones. Según las fuentes, las fugas de líquido del interior crearon un olor terrible y provocaron que los propietarios de las tiendas vecinas llamaran a la policía.
Los detectives de la policía de Nueva York se unieron a otras agencias de la ciudad que investigan los camiones en las instalaciones de Utica Avenue el miércoles por la noche, con la sección de la calle cerrada al público.
John DiPietro, propietario de una propiedad vecina, dijo que había observado cadáveres almacenados en los camiones durante al menos varias semanas durante la pandemia de coronavirus.
"No respetas a los muertos de esa manera. Ese podría haber sido mi padre, mi hermano ”, dijo. "No le haces eso a los muertos".
rooklyn Borough President Eric Adams was on the scene, but could not confirm any details of the storage. Adams said the city needed to ramp up staff for a “bereavement committee” to deal with the surging deaths due to the coronavirus.
“We need to bring in funeral directors, morgues, [medical examiners], clergies … when you find bodies in trucks like this throughout our city, treating them in an undignified manner, that’s unacceptable.”
Police called in the state Department of Health. A spokesman at the agency said the department is actively looking into the matter, but couldn’t comment further.
In addition to the two U-Hauls holding corpses, the facility had two more refrigerated trucks also storing bodies and a third box truck of empty caskets, police sources said.
The funeral home told officers that the bodies were supposed to be going to a crematorium but they didn’t come and pick them up, sources told the Post.
Corpses began being stored in the trucks after the company’s freezer stopped working correctly, an anonymous official told the New York Times.
The owner of Pemco supplies, a kitchen appliance parts supplier nearby the funeral home, called the situation a “disaster.”
“They were storing them in U-Haul trucks; we knew what was going on but not the extent,” the owner said.
“One thing to be [killed] by the coronavirus, another to be treated inhumanly.”
Calls to the funeral company, went unanswered Wednesday afternoon.
Workers, some not wearing protective equipment, could be seen taking bodies from the facility into the night.
A tarp was extended from the building to shield the process as Dodge Caravan minivans backed up onto the sidewalk to receive the corpses. A gentle wind occasionally blew the tarp back to reveal the body bags as they were wheeled into the minivans on gurneys.
“You don’t see this all over the city — especially in a residential neighborhood,” one shocked cop told The Post. “Never seen anything like this.”