Funeral Home Puts Wrong Man in Casket, Tells Family They’re the Ones Mistaken

A California-based family has lodged a lawsuit against a Compton funeral home, alleging that the wrong body was placed in their relative’s casket, dressed in his suit. The family claims that when they raised the issue with the funeral home, an employee tried to convince them that they were mistaken.

Amentha Hunt, a family member, recounts the shock and trauma her family experienced when they arrived at the Harrison-Ross Mortuary to bid farewell to her 80-year-old uncle, Otis Adkinson. Instead of their loved one, they found a stranger dressed in Adkinson’s clothes. “It was a man lying there in my uncle’s suit, but it wasn’t my uncle,” Hunt told a local news station. “This shouldn’t have happened. I didn’t make arrangements there to see the wrong body.”

Hunt further alleges that when the family sought assistance from a mortuary worker, the employee insisted that the man in the casket was indeed her uncle. It was only after she provided a photograph of her uncle and insisted on the error that the employee acknowledged the mistake.

The family had to wait for three hours for the mortuary to rectify the mix-up so that Adkinson could be laid to rest. However, the image of the stranger in Adkinson’s suit remains etched in Hunt’s memory. “It’s painful. I still think about it. That’s something that’s never going to go away, to view the wrong corpse,” she expressed.

Elvis Tran, the attorney representing Hunt, described the mortuary’s actions as outrageous and indicative of the need for changes in their operations. “For them to come in and see the wrong corpse and for the mortuary to deny that it’s the wrong corpse and then need proof that it’s in fact the right person,” Tran told the local outlet. “We think it’s just a basic standard of care that they messed up on and that they really need to improve their ways, so they don’t do this to another family,” he added.

Harrison-Ross Mortuary has refuted the allegations and announced plans to issue a cease-and-desist letter against Hunt. Adkinson, who passed away on February 28, 2025, was a native of Memphis and had served as an EMT for Southern California’s Schaefer Ambulance Service for 29 years before being promoted to supervisor. His family remembers him as a “good ole country boy” who loved fishing, barbecuing, dancing, and watching the Lakers play.