A California family was horrified to find a stranger’s body on display at a memorial service for their loved one—a shocking ordeal that even caused a relative to suffer a heart attack in the chapel, family members said.
The family of Joey Espinosa, 44, who recently died of heart failure, was attending his memorial service at Forest Lawn Covina Hills funeral home when they discovered that the mortuary had put the wrong body in the casket.
“They didn’t know where my nephew’s body was,” Espinosa’s aunt, Laura Levario, told CBS Los Angeles.
After the apparent mix-up, funeral home staff ushered the family into a different room at the facility. However, the body on display there was not Espinosa’s either.
The upheaval was so unnerving that Levario’s husband collapsed from a heart attack in the chapel. He later woke up three days later on life support in the hospital.
“It’s the worst experience we’ve ever had,” Levario said.
Forest Lawn attributed the mortifying mishap to a “scheduling error.” Adding insult to injury, the funeral home offered the family only $200 in compensation—a mere 1% of the nearly $20,000 funeral cost.
The family is now suing the funeral home for emotional distress and negligence.
“Instead of mourning and remembering their loved one, they are searching for a body,” said Elvis Tran, the family’s lawyer. “When you’re spending that much money on a place like Forest Lawn, you would think they would do things properly.”
The facility’s website boasts of offering “significant” artwork and “spectacular” grounds, making the error all the more shocking.
After over an hour of confusion and error, the funeral home was eventually able to locate Espinosa’s body and begin the service.
Though rare, similar tragic mistakes by funeral homes do happen. In October, a funeral home in Camden, New Jersey, was sued after it displayed the wrong body draped in the deceased loved one’s clothing. The man’s family accused the funeral home of negligence in handling human remains, among other claims.
https://nypost.com/2025/10/26/us-news/funeral-home-displays-wrong-body-at-memorial-service-leading-relative-to-suffer-heart-attack-kin/