Memorial held after remains of 300 people found in closed funeral home
On a rainy morning in Detroit, five gray caskets filled with hundreds of cremated remains sat in a small cemetery chapel, where mourners said goodbye to their loved ones for a second time in an unusual mass memorial service.
"Roosevelt Adkins Jr., Sally C. Agee, unidentified loved one," Rev. Louis Pruis of Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian Church said as clergy from various religions took turns reading off some 300 names of the dead.
The remains were all recently discovered abandoned inside a funeral home that closed in April. The urns contained ashes of people whose relatives were deceived by Cantrell Funeral Home into believing they'd been properly interred.
The funeral home was forced to close after the state Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs inspected its location at 10400 Mack in Detroit and found deplorable conditions, including improperly embalmed and decomposing bodies.
Read more: https://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2018/11/cremated_remains.html